Conti wants to remain the market leader

The automotive supplier Continental will continue to land in the tests of the leading magazines back tire on the front seats. Therefore, the winter tires are continually being developed at Continental.

Tuesday 30 August 2011, 10.07 clock

Hanover. The automotive supplier Continental plans to expand the technology and market leadership through continuous development of winter tires. "We want to make sure that we end up with the tests of the leading tire specialist magazines in the coming years on the front seats," said the head of Continental's tire development Burkhard Wies.

A second prominent theme of the next several years the physicist tires with lower rolling resistance for fuel-efficient vehicles. The lucrative business of the Hanoverian car tire supplier, the next manufacturing and stability programs, fuel injection systems or car interiors, had turned out during the crisis as a stable earner.

Meadow conceded that despite his Continental engineers around 1000 in Hanover alone can work simultaneously on all tire properties. The tire engineers at befänden always trade-offs between some good values ​​in the wet, the braking distance, and wear. Continental, however, have the right to remain a leader in overall performance. In the winter tire can trust, according to Conti meadow on a decisive competitive advantage: "We have a patent on a plasticizer, which all would like to copy because he gives us in the winter tire segment ensures immense benefits."

The expenditure on research and development amounted to around 2.2 percent of the meadow of highly profitable sales division. In the first six months of the tires made 4.1 billion euros of the Group-wide revenues of just under 15 billion euros. Simultaneously scored the tire business, an operating profit of 565 million euros and was thus a margin of 13.7 percent. The MDAX-listed group reported an overall margin of just 8.6 percent comparatively.

Research into alternative materials
When it comes to rolling resistance, which should lead to lower fuel consumption and lower CO2 emissions, focuses on small meadow with a large diameter tires. "The cars really need new tires sizes, the whole, but also technical limits," said the expert. "Over the past nearly ten years we have been able to halve the rolling resistance of about. These great progress can not be updated easily." Further improvements required also for new materials and therefore could be quite expensive for the customer.

To confirm that the make on the world markets, commodity price fluctuations independent of the world's fourth largest tire manufacturer conducts research in collaboration with partners such as universities in alternative materials. A project of natural rubber from dandelions to win, was in the laboratory stage. Likely to implementation in practice, however, took another ten years, Wies said. At the same time it is working on procedures to the scrap material in the tire manufacturing and re-absorb. There might even be able to implement over the next two to five years.

The so-called original equipment, so that cars driving on Conti from the car works, Continental is reportedly the market leader in Europe since 2003. In the booming Chinese market, the company is establishing a special thanks to local production and thereby tries to increase its market share in China continuously. Continental, for example, have pent-up demand in the U.S. yet. There is now reorganized the sales and gained market share it would. For the long-term success it was now "critical that they where in addition to the existing plant in Mount Vernon soon have yet another work available," said Meadow. This new plant is part of more than one billion euro investment program, to be built into the frame until the end of 2013, a new car tire plant in Kaluga, Russia. (Dpa-AFX/nib/Foto: Continental)