MINING TYRES
Assessing cable damage on a 33.00R51
Bridgestone tyre at Kal Tire Mining Tire Group's
Alfreton, UK site with a view to doing an Ultra
Repair
OTR in overview
The mining tyre industry has proven resilient in the face of
COVID-19, while the ramp up of AHS fleets means there will
be some interesting results for tyre wear, reports Paul Moore
Talking to key players in the mining tyres
market, the first point of discussion was if
the COVID-19 crisis had affected supply of
large OTR tyres. And the answer seems to be no
on the whole. Jaye Young, Mining Business Line –
Marketing Director, Michelin, told IM: “Mining is
a global business and the commodities mined by
our customers continue to be in high demand.
During the COVID-19 crisis, one region of the
world would be impacted while others remained
operational, and as other regions began to close,
new ones would reopen. Since we supply tyres
globally to our customers, most of our mining
tyre manufacturing facilities continued to operate
to meet customer tyre demand worldwide.
Overall, the mining tyre market has been resilient
in 2020.”
Michelin operates mining tyre manufacturing
facilities around the world, including North and
South America, Spain, and France. As the COVID-
19 pandemic spread worldwide, the company did
experience some brief interruptions in its mining
tyre production, especially in Europe where
facilities and employees learned new safety
procedures in order to return safely to the site.
“We worked very hard to monitor supply and
demand, prioritising supply to prevent any of our
mining customers from halting production. We
have been successful in those efforts, and now
all of our sites are operating at nearly full
capacity with strong
supply.”
In May, Bridgestone
announced a
temporary phased shutdown of some of its plants
in Japan due to market conditions but this largely
involved the Hofu plant, which produces small &
medium OTR tyres. The Shimonoseki and
Kitakyushu plants, which produce giant and large
Off-The-Road (OTR) tyres, were not included in
this shutdown and continued to operate as
normal.
Taking Australia as an example of a mining
market operating largely as normal, the majority
of mines in the country have continued to
operate at or near full capacity, with Pilbara iron
ore production expected to achieve a record 525
Mt for FY2019/20. The big mining tyre players
have continued to invest in Australia too – last
year Bridgestone Mining Solutions Australia
(BMSA), established the Hunter Valley Mining
Solution Centre (HMSC) which combines mining
vehicle tyre sales, maintenance, and repair
services; rim refurbishment and repair services;
and tyre fitting services to provide solutions for
mine operators that are tailored to frontline mine
operations. HMSC is the second Bridgestone
mining solution centre in Australia following the
Pilbara Mining Solution Centre, which was
established in Western Australia in November
2017.
There is also the issue of a slight dip in
demand in some places reducing any pressure on
supply. Where there have been temporary
closures of mines in some cases tyres have
continued to be delivered meaning stockpiles are
fuller than usual or where mines have scaled
back production, some trucks have been parked,
again reducing demand. So any temporary issues
with supply that there have been were absorbed
by these trends. The issue was not so much
mining tyre plants closing for a few weeks, more
Michelin has seen an increased interest in, and sales of, its MICHELIN ®
MEMS ® 4 complete monitoring and reporting platform for tyres and usage
conditions
64 International Mining | JULY/AUGUST 2020