“The new manufacturing company, which has been named ‘Mai (Shandong) Radial Tyre Co, Ltd’ is a technically advanced radial tyre manufacturing plant with a highly skilled workforce. In addition to the key manufacturing, technological and product development assets, Jinyu’s talented OTR team will play an important role in accelerating Mai Group’s Asian market development strategy,” said director of sales and marketing Ian Thomas.
“The acquisition will enable MAI Group to accelerate its cross-platform radial strategy for OTR and High Speed Crane tyre applications, as well as developing its Asian business,” Thomas continued.
“With this acquisition, we will be able to develop products and platforms that work in the Asian market and are suitable for the toughest OTR applications globally. The Grou’ps strategy for Radial OTR is based on cross-platform development environments, layers of product that run across its manufacturing plants in Asia and Europe, enabling the fast development of heavy duty, application specific products. 
Kevin Buckley, the company’s new European sales manager, pictured on the MAI stand at Autopromotec.
“The manufacturing and technology landscape continues to evolve and, for the MAI Group, production expertise and efficiencies play a major role in our growth strategy for high specification, quality radial OTR tyres. We continue to focus on areas where we can differentiate and add value. Innovation and technology enable us to compete with the world’s leading manufacturers in terms of quality, availability and value for money,” Thomas said.
“This state of the art manufacturing plant and its strong technology assets will enable MAI Group to innovate on our existing product platforms while reducing time-to-market and increasing value. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of our Turkish manufacturing plant with synergies across the product range.”
MAI Group says it aims to continue the development of Jinyu’s products and to support new and existing customers, continuing what it calls an open approach with its global dealer network, encouraging and supporting feedback.
Founded in 1953, the Italian MAI organisation initially concentrated its efforts on retreading tyres for agricultural machinery. During its early years the company’s workload steadily increased leading to several changes of location until, in the 1960s, a purpose built plant was established in Castelle with a covered area of some 20,000 sqm. The Uzmai Group has recently introduced its own range of all steel radial tyres under the Uzmai International banner, a new joint venture company with commercial offices housed in a modern facility in Verona. From here the company controls the distribution of its products via an exclusive worldwide dealer network while taking advantage of its new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Turkey. The radial tyre range, branded the Maitech UM5S Minextra, has been specially developed for off-road applications with sizes to suit many different types of constrcution equipment. Maitech has 50 approved dealers worldwide.
“Maitech firmly believes that quality drives productivity, not only at manufacturing level where the very latest QC systems ensure the finest quality of product is produced, but also in logistics, administration, planning and distribution,” said Thomas. “Maitech truly believes that customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal and drives quality, innovation, productivity and ultimately profitability. Maitech all steel radial OTR tyres are not only manufactured to ISO 9001 but also designed to the same stringent standards.” (Tyres & Accessories/Staffordshire, U.K.)
