Continental Tire the Americas has started shipping flat precure treads from its new plant in Morelia, Mexico.
Plans call for the products to be distributed throughout North and South America as part of CTA’s ContiLifeCycle business.
The Morelia tread manufacturing facility officially opened on Apr. 27. The 3,100-square-meter plant is currently producing 7,500 rolls of flat precure treads monthly, which CTA said was “enough to retread 22,500 truck tires,” and the plant will be expanded to meet production levels of more than one million flat retreads annually by 2015.
“With this plant implementation, Continental is assuring its customers a high quality precure tread, along with reduced costs and delivery time throughout the Americas,” said John Barnes, ContiLifeCycle manager. “The new ContiLifeCycle plant in Morelia is already supplying our six retread plants throughout Mexico and is poised to begin shipments to our locations in Ecuador. In the future, it will adequately supply our network of retread licensees throughout the Americas.”
The flat treads produced from the Morelia plant currently include ContiLifeCycle HDL Eco Plus (Heavy Drive Long Haul), HTL Eco Plus (Heavy Trailer Long Haul), HDR1 (Heavy Drive Regional) and D450 (a General brand drive tire). The plant also recently began producing the ContiLifeCycle retread for the HSR (Heavy Steer Regional) and HSC (Heavy Steer Construction) tires for Mexico in 18/32nds of tread depth, and will soon expand to a 23/32nds product.
“Over the next few weeks, we will continue to expand our inventory range and volumes produced from the Morelia ContiLifeCycle production facility. Our goal is to have a full portfolio of flat precure treads that match all of our new tire products, and have them available for any ContiLifeCycle retreader throughout the Americas,” Barnes said.
