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the globe, and indeed, the company has managed to develop sales across an extraordinarily widespread range of countries from the USA to Ecuador, from the UK to Tanzania and from New Zealand to Japan. According to John Lee, though, the company’s priorities are now to develop a stronger pres- ence in both Europe and Latin America, using the company’s premium brand, Maximus.
“We are looking for direct sales and we face strong competition from local sup- pliers, so it’s a challenge to penetrate the Latin American market,” said Lee, “but we have made some inroads in the region selling to Ecuador.”
Unfortunately, market conditions in South-East Asia are currently not help- ing. “Local tread production in Malaysia has fallen by 40-50%,” he continued. has impacted the pricing of retreads. The trade war between China and US
The market conditions in South-East back the company’s plans to develop a franchise network in South East Asia. This concept was developed in 2016 and the company does have one fran- chisee in the pipeline within the South- East Asian region. Generally, though, the development of the concept has been held back due to the market dif-
Overall, however, Maxrubber’s view of prospects for retreading sector are positive. “It is particularly gratifying to be celebrating this anniversary as the future for high quality rubber compound and tyre retreading business looks bright,” said John Lee at the company’s anniversary event earlier last year, and the company has certainly made on the back of this positivity in recent years.
The company invested in an OTR extrusion
l i n e i n 2 0 0 3 , expanding into the precure OTR sector ten years later in 2013. The company now sells OTR ma- terials to sev- eral overseas markets includ- ing Thailand, Philippines, Ja- pan and the USA.
The Sabah based retreader Vimax was also acquired in 2012 and, ac- cording to Lee, this subsidiary still continues to perform well, produc- ing 2,000 retreads per month.
More recent developments have included the addition of Wing and Eclipse designs in 2014 and the launch of a completely new segmented brand line-up in branded products, the premium Maximus range, a mid-range brand called Maxcool, the Max- cap economy brand for the lo- cal market, and a branded Wing
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