The future of tire plants

Presented by:
Mr. Jacob Peled
Executive Chairman
Pelmar Engineering Ltd.
The Future of
Tire Plants
Future Tire Conference 2014
Brussels, Belgium
October 2014

2
INTRODUCTION
If someone will thoroughly investigate the development of the tire
industry, he will certainly find that there have been very few major
changes or developments for the last 100 years or more. The last
major breakthrough was radial construction, which at best can be
described as evolution and not revolution. Improvements in
performance, better raw materials, automation and various other
advancements have all been very significant for the tire industry, but
these continuous developments are happening at a very slow pace,
if any.
1885 Benz
Even by the
early 1920’s,
car tires were
not far evolved
from bicycle
tires
1914 Cadillac
CC BY-NC by rich701

3
With very few exceptions, the tire industry has always tried in a very
conservative manner to adapt itself to the increasing demands of the
vehicle manufacturers and never the other way around. This is
despite the fact that the most important part of any vehicle are likely
the tires.
Some people will argue, but everyone will finally
agree that these 4 round black items are what
is holding the vehicle to the road and allow it to
transport passengers and/or cargo safely from
one point to another. There is no other part in
the vehicle that needs to adapt itself to
extreme changes in weather, temperature,
road conditions, speed and erratic situations
caused by need for emergency stop or
acceleration. At present, all tire parameters
depend on one thing and it is air pressure.

4
CRITERIA
What would be the criteria upon which future tire plants will
be built?
1. Capital Investment
2. Safety and Quality
3. Environment
4. Recycling
5. Automation
6. Specialization
7. Outsourcing
8. Limited Space Availability
9. Geographical Considerations
10.Changes in Tire Construction

5
CRITERIA
Tire manufacturers, car producers and
equipment and services suppliers
have all made tremendous capital
investment over the years and
would, therefore, fight every change
that would make these investments
superfluous. Normally this particular
criterion would be placed at the end
of the list. Unfortunately, I believe
that this criterion will have a very
major impact on the decisions of
any existing tire company who shall
decide to emerge “out of the box.”
So what would be the criteria upon which future tire plants
will be built?
1. Capital Investment:

6
The same applies to car producers who already find it most difficult to
adapt and commit themselves to electric vehicles despite the distinct
improvements in electric powerhouse. Also the fact that there is no
one who doesn’t agree that in the future and as soon as possible,
electric cars will be the only vehicles on the road. The pollution, the
costs and amortization of combustion engines dictates the change,
but it is not happening at the pace and in the form in which it should
be.
This particular criterion would lead
tire companies to push for
reduction in costs of new
machinery (CAPEX) and
increased automation. At the
same time it would generate a
strong movement towards
upgrading and reconditioning
existing equipment (a type of
recycling).
CAPITAL INVESTMENT
Fully Reconditioned Comerio Calender

7
Tire safety and quality cannot be
compromised and demands will
continuously increase. It will affect
the decisions on what equipment,
what material and where to
produce modern tires.
2. Safety and Quality:
CRITERIA
Tianjin Jiurong Wheel Cornering Fatigue Test Machine

8
Environmental issues are going to play perhaps the most significant
role in determining the shape, type and location of new tire
manufacturing facilities. It is becoming increasingly clear that
there will be no compromise on the continued pollution that a tire
causes when they are produced, when they are used and when
they die.
3. Environment:
CRITERIA

9
3. Environment:
CRITERIA
The below table demonstrates the decreasing amounts of resources
utilized for production as a result of improved environmental tools
by Bridgestone. This company is investing a great deal of time,
money and effort to achieve better results and in the process
also save on costs.

10
This is connected to Point 3, but I mention it separately since it is such
a strong criterion that it will have a major effect on future tire
production from all angles: raw materials, method of production
and reuse of worn out casings. In the future, retreading will
continue to be the No. 1 recycling method. However, since it is not
a complete solution, additional systems would have to be
developed, mostly pyrolysis, to regenerate the expensive products
from which the tire is made.
This is connected to Point 3, but I mention it separately since it is such
a strong criterion that it will have a major effect on future tire
production from all angles: raw materials, method of production
and reuse of worn out casings. In the future, retreading will
continue to be the No. 1 recycling method. However, since it is not
a complete solution, additional systems would have to be
developed, mostly pyrolysis, to regenerate the expensive products
from which the tire is made.
4. Recycling:
CRITERIA
There is no doubt that new tires will use an increasing portion of
recycled material to completely avoid any landfilling or burning of
tires. The added value of incineration is minute, and perhaps even
negative, in comparison to the energy, raw material, labor and
engineering which is invested in every single tire produced.
There is no doubt that new tires will use an increasing portion of
recycled material to completely avoid any landfilling or burning of
tires. The added value of incineration is minute, and perhaps even
negative, in comparison to the energy, raw material, labor and
engineering which is invested in every single tire produced.

“However, to hope for a
review of the tire as an
assembly of more than a
dozen components-some
of them intricate and
sensitive in detail, and
many of them reluctant to
stick together unless
somebody very astute
organizes it.”
-Jack Setright
11
Even in countries where labor is readily available at low cost, automation
will prevail. Producing such a crucial and sophisticated product
cannot any longer be done by hand, nor can any part of the
production be left to possible human error. The risks are too large
and the benefits too small.
5. Automation:
CRITERIA
The first ones to understand this were the
Chinese, who, despite abundance of labor,
have insisted on ordering and designing the
most automated processes to avoid any
manual intervention. These have not been
applied completely in the Chinese plants,
but it certainly indicates a direction. The
Chinese have without doubt set a trend
which is adopted now by Western tire
industries, not the other way around as
many seem or want to believe.

12
Tire production is actually several manufacturing systems put together
attempting unsuccessfully to coordinate and optimize their
operation. Compounding, for instance, is a manufacturing process
by itself and, without very major investments in inventories and
processes, is extremely difficult to adapt itself to the changing
requirements of tire component production, not to speak of curing.
Curing is and will always be a bottleneck which dictates operations
in other departments that are illogical or inefficient at best from an
industrial and human resources point of view. People call it
"flexibility," but the reality is "acrobatics.“
Simultaneously, off-take agreements will increase as part of the trend to
specialize in certain types and sizes.
6. Specialization:
CRITERIA

13
As a result of and connected to Point 6, outsourcing will become deep-
rooted and will touch every aspect of tire production. It is a normal
evolution, but it will now become more significant.
It is not many years ago, and some people may remember, that tire
manufacturers were producing their own fabrics, dipping them and
only then rubberizing. The same occurred with mold and drum
production and even tire building machines, which a few still do. In
fact, it was completely abnormal for any plant to outsource
technical services, testing facilities, and even maintenance
services. It is clear that this time is over and a modern tire
manufacturing facility will concentrate on producing the final tire
from many outsourced materials and components.
7. Outsourcing of materials, components, engineering
services and maintenance:
CRITERIA

14
Since in most countries land becomes not only scarce but frightfully
expensive, the size of manufacturing facilities will become a major
consideration. To be competitive, a tire plant will have to be efficient
and small. The time for huge, 200-acre tire plants is long gone, but
some companies do not realize this yet. They continue either
because they have this land or they believe they have the resources
to purchase and develop it. It will only take a few more years before
they will face reality.
8. Limited Space Availability:
CRITERIA

15
Tires today are being freighted all over the world and as a result they
provide tremendous income to the shipping and trucking
companies. Absurds like shipments of 57" tires from one part of
the world to the other are not much different than shipments of
thousands of container loads of truck tires from Asia to Europe,
from Europe to the States, from the US to the Far East and vice
versa. The cost and handling involved in hauling such products to
such vast distances will change. Successful companies in India
will cater to their own markets and the same in China, the US and
Europe.
The above somewhat contradicts the assumptions I have given in Point
6, Specialization. I personally believe that an equilibrium will be
reached between these two antidotes.
9. Geographical Considerations:
CRITERIA

As mentioned in the preface to this presentation, tires have always
been defined as “black and almost round”. The basic construction
of beads, sidewalls, shoulders and treads has not changed in the
last 100 years. Also the principle of tires being held firmly in shape
by air pressure has also not changed. The introduction of tubeless
tires was merely a replacement of the innertube by innerliner. I
believe that this will be amended by different construction and
different components, adapting tires to special requirements much
more than is done today.
10. Change in Tire Construction:
Bridgestone AirFree
Concept demoed at the
Tokyo Motor Show-Nov
2013
Michelin Tweel
CRITERIA
Mitas PneuTrac-
Technology by Galileo Wheel Ltd.
demoed at Agritechnica - Nov 2013
Future Tire Conference 2014 16

17
In summary of all the above criteria, it is clear that the
modern tire manufacturing facility will look different. It will
be smaller, automated, specialized and meet strict
environmental requirements. It will be able to deliver
its product at a rate that would be suitable for its size and
function. Its tires will be produced to meet a specific
Market demand. The trend to first produce and then find
a market is already gone in most places. (In France, they
did not hear about it yet.)
SUMMARY

18
 No Mill Room including Storage
 Vast Material and Compound Testing Facilities
 Components Preparation without Calenders, Tread and
Sidewall Extrusion Lines
 Tire Building Fully Automated
 Curing in Two Stages
 Tire Testing Online
 Storage and Forwarding
Automated Systems
The Future Tire Plant will consist of:
STORAGE
AND
FORWARDING
TIRE
TESTING
CURING
TIRE
BUILDING
COMPONENTS
PREPARATION
ACCEPTANCE
TESTING
FACILITIES

19
A. No Mill Room
New tire plants will have no compounding and mixing facilities
whatsoever. It will be completely outsourced and will avoid the
need of a major part of today's tire plant. The entire facility of
weighing and charging carbon blacks, whites, oils, and the entire
mill room equipment will disappear. These will be installed at
companies specializing in custom compounding and supplying at
least all the master batches, probably also the final batches and
the strip stock, to the tire company.
The absence of mixing and mill room facilities will decrease the size of
the tire manufacturing plant by at least one third, will save a
major capital investment and reduce the need for storage and
handling of virgin raw materials completely.

20
NO MILL ROOM
The compounding plants themselves will also change and in most
cases large batch internal mixers will be replaced by continuous
extrusion mixing facilities, which are not only more efficient, but
require less space and energy. Carbon black, for instance, will be
supplied, as already done today in a few cases, in pre-weighed,
low-melt polyethylene/EVA bags to be fed directly to the mixers.
In other words, please imagine a plant that has no virgin raw material
acceptance and test facilities, no huge storage silos and charging
systems, no small chemical weighing systems, no mixers, no
batch offs, no stackers and not even people in the purchasing
department in charge of raw material acquisition.

21
Generally the tendency will be to use as much as possible identical
materials and reduce the variety, without compromising technical
capabilities, but perhaps compromising price-wise by using more
expensive, high-quality products for the sake of uniformity and
consistency.
NO MILL ROOM
Cimcorp OYCimcorp OY

22
B. Material and Compound Testing Facilities
Acceptance tests for batches arriving from the sub-
supplier of compounds will be weighed and
tested completely automatically and sent
directly to their position within the components
preparation department. Batches that will be
disqualified will be stored separately for return
to the supplier. This will be relatively easy
because the same trucks or train will be used.
Alternatively, a further test by the tire
manufacturers' expert will be conducted
manually.
It is important to emphasize the significance of
testing because of the automated production
plant which by nature will not tolerate
deficiencies or dimensional sub-standard.
Alpha MDR2000

23
C. Components Preparation
This department will not include at all any tread or sidewall extrusion
line, steel cord calender and certainly not band builders. There
may still be room for a textile calender, but in the future even
these will disappear as well, since rubberized fabrics probably
already pre-cut to measure will be supplied by the fabric
producers or by sub-contractors specialized in calendering.
Personally I believe that calendering will eventually disappear,
including innerliner calendering. Reinforcement will be done by
overlaid strips as cap-ply rather than rubberized fabrics. Innerliner
will be replaced by films, already supplied by EXXON and another
major supplier. Cap-plies today are already being furnished by
sub-contractors or are being produced by the tire manufacturers,
but requiring a very considerably lower space, energy and
manpower. It will be completely automated in the future.

24
D. Tire Building
This process is already fully automated for passenger and light truck
tires and very soon will be the same for truck tires. Companies
like VMI in Holland and HF in Germany are quickly developing
building machines which control themselves and without any
human intervention and with capacities that could have not been
dreamed of a few years ago. The new tire company would have a
tire building department completely free of any personnel and with
robotic loading and unloading of green tires.
VMI MAXX®-Cycle time 36 seconds

25
As mentioned in the above Component Preparation, a film that
replaces innerliner is not only lighter in weight but significantly more
resistant to air migration and is applied automatically by the TBM. If
the development work will succeed and films will become more heat
resistant, then the need for curing bladders may be avoided in the
curing process. This is especially true if the initial curing will be done
without a tread.
It is important to emphasize that part of the new tire building machines’
philosophy is to cope with the tendency towards lighter tires which is
now an important mission of every tire company. Among other
reasons is the decrease in rolling resistance and consequent fuel
savings.
TIRE BUILDING

26
E. Curing Department
Curing is traditionally the bottleneck of every
tire producer. Consequently, unlike other
departments, this part of the plant will
increase in size and in number of presses.
The tendency is to avoid in as much as
possible any change of molds and at the
same time decrease the cycle time.
Pressurized hot water system will disappear
completely and methods will be sought after
for curing at lower temperature and higher
speed.
Uzer Makina Hydraulic Press
McNeil/NRM 66-1100 Press

27
The life of curing bladders will be prolonged significantly by using
materials which are heat resistant, combined with lower
temperatures and shorter curing time. Anti-adhesives will be
introduced to the bladders during compounding and they will
slowly migrate to the surface to enhance release. On the mold
side, there will be no release agents used. This will be achieved
by the compounds' ability to resist adhesion and super-finish of
the mold itself. Mold cleaning will be done by nitrogen/dry ice, as
already done today, and robotically. The above would require
probably the use of steel engraved molds rather than aluminum.
There is research going on already of eliminating curing bladders
altogether by increasing the heat resistance of the innerliner
which will be made of different materials and by shortening the
curing cycle.
CURING DEPARTMENT

28
There is a tendency to split curing into two stages:
1. To cure the carcass
2. To cure the tread
I believe that this system will eventually dominate the industry. It will
enable to:
A. Cure the carcass in a 2 piece mold rather than segmented.
B. Cure treads in accordance with market requirements and thus
reduce very substantially the stock of finished tires.
Curing the carcass alone reduces the curing time by at least 30% and
probably more depending on the tire type. It will enable to
increase capacity and avoid the bottleneck which curing normally
causes.
CURING DEPARTMENT

29
Taking it even further, there is a tendency today to consider producing
new tires with pre-cured treads which are produced and cured
horizontally. Unlike in the past, the result of pre-cured tread
retreading are similar and often better than new tires which
causes many experts to completely reconsider tire production and
curing methods.
CURING DEPARTMENT
Personally I can see this
happening and believe that
it will not only increase
capacity, but also reduce
costs and space and
remove even the necessity
of strip winding, which
otherwise is required with
every tire building machine. Precured Tread Press

30
Because of the increased automation, testing becomes even more
important than before and will probably eventually be applied on
100% of production. Consequently, more efficient and faster
uniformity and run-out machines will have to be employed. All the
manufacturers of such equipment are working on it very diligently, to
the best of our knowledge. This includes shearography and/or x-ray
which in the future tire plant would be a dominant factor. Tests and
sorting will be done automatically, as is already done in some
plants today. Depending on the plant's philosophy there will either
be no seconds or a repair department would have to be part of every
plant for correction of blemishes and/or cosmetic faults. In my
opinion, adopting the system of no seconds/DA's would be more
economical and would avoid manual operation and intervention.
It will also force the quality of the plant upward to achieve economic
success. Michelin has embraced this philosophy from Day One.
F. Testing

31
As already done today in many plants, storage and distribution will be
fully automatic, governed by barcode or even more likely RFID. In
many aircraft tires today already, information is stored within the tire
itself for the entire life of the tire. This is of special importance with
aircraft tires because of the large number of retreads these tire
undergo on one hand and the huge responsibility and liability on the
other.
G. Storage and Forwarding
In the future all tires would be able to
communicate with the users' computer
and its history and condition would be
transmitted (smart tires). Professor
Saied Taheri from the Center for Tire
Research at Virginia Tech and his team
have already advanced this subject
significantly.

32
A change in tire production facilities is inevitable. There will be a lot of
objections by existing tire manufacturers, vehicle producers and
machinery producers. The previous points clearly indicate why.
CONCLUSION
Electric cars will have a significant impact
on passenger tires but TBRs, Farm and
OTR production would have to go
through major changes and
improvements as well. The changes
will be dictated by markets,
circumstances and particularly
environmental requirements.
STORAGE
AND
FORWARDING
TIRE
TESTING
CURING
TIRE
BUILDING
COMPONENTS
PREPARATION
ACCEPTANCE
TESTING
FACILITIES

33
Last but not least, tires will start to be adapted to the user's
requirements, particularly in Agri and OTR. Already for the first time
in a century a tire was invented whose sidewalls when blown deflect
inside the tire rather than sideways. As was mentioned to me by the
Chairman of Mitas, this tire could only be invented by someone who
does not understand tires, which indeed was the case.
When considering it further, there should be no reason to
accept outside deflection as the axiom. When the
sidewall under pressure deflects inside the tire they
create a thicker sidewall and automatic protection for the
shoulder and tread area in case of deflation. I believe
that in the future most tires would look like this, which of
course will also have a significant impact on the shape
the future tire manufacturing facility. This, however, is the
subject of another presentation which I will be making
next year.
CONCLUSION

2011 34
• The Tire and Rubber Industry Experts
• Over 49 years of Continuous Activity in the Polymer Industry
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• Engineering, Machinery, Technology, Raw Materials
• Mergers and Acquisitions
The Pelmar Group

Pelmar Engineering Ltd. would like to thank the following people and
organizations for allowing Pelmar the use of their materials and information:
35
Thank You
For Your Attention
www.pelmar.com
Cimcorp OY
McNeil/NRM
Uzer Makina
Akar Makina
And others
CGS Group/Mitas a.s.
Bridgestone Corporation
Michelin Tire Group
VMI Group
Larsen & Toubro

The future of tire plants

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