Factory staff relug their last giant tyre

Press, 1 June 1984, Page 4

Factory staff relug their last giant tyre

Rubber workers replaced the lugs on their last giant tyre at the Reidrubber Tyre retreading factory in Sockburn on Tuesday. The mammoth tyre, a 2100 x 35 from a dump truck, is the last of its size to be relugged in the South Island for an indefinite time. When the Sockburn factory, which was recently bought by Dunlop New Zealand, Ltd, closes in midJune, the relugging plant wil close with it. At this stage there are no plans to relocate the equipment or the three operators of the relugging section. Relugging is a process by which the lugs (the rubber projections which give grip to a tyre) are replaced. The process involves “open steam curing” and is done by hand. It is very different from retreading tyres which uses a mechanical moulding process. A relugged tyre usually has a life expectancy equivalent to that of a new tyre. South Islanders who need their tyres relugged will now be faced with the

alternative of freighting them to the North Island for relugging or buying new tyres. Dunlop’s factory at Palmerston North offers a similar process to relugging for most sizes of tyres and Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of New Zealand, Ltd, will relug up to gradersize tyres at its Hamilton factory. Both alternatives wil inevitably be more expensive. The tyre in the photograph cost $1604 to be relugged, but that is less than a third of the price of a new $5178 tyre. Freight to the North Island will cost extra time and money to the owners of the tyres being relugged. The foreman of the relugS section, Mr Bill Lucas, that since December he and his two co-workers had relugged 40 tyres. They relugged an average of 70 to 80 a year, he said, working on tyres which ranged from the giant size in the photograph to ones the size of a motor-cycle tyre. After news of the closuring had been announced

the factory had received numerous letters from concerned customers, said Mr Lucas. One of the factory’s main customers had said that he would probably send his tyres to be relugged in Australia now, said Mr Lucas. The managing director of Dunlop in Wellington, Mr V. J. Ackeus, said that the company had decided to close the Sockburn relugging plant because it was no longer economically viable. The company was now reevaluating the demand for relugging in the South Island, however, said Mr Ackeus, and had not decided definitely against reestablishing a plant there. Concern had been expressed by some customers about the closing, said Mr Ackeus. He expected a decision on a relugging plant would be made in a couple of months. In the meantime, other Dunlop factories were using retread and a new super-cure process on tyres, said Mr Ackeus. The spokesman for one earth-moving firm said that

the closing of the Sockbum relugging plant would mean a greater cost in both time and money. The company could not afford to have several thousand dollars worth of spare tyres around to keep its machinery in action while tyres were being relugged in the North Island, he said. Relugging, if the tyre was in basically sound condition, was preferable to buying new tyres, he said. Mr Lucas, who joined the relugging section three years after its inception in 1949, said “it seems a shame that what has been put into this section will now be lost.” Mr Lucas, and his coworkers have accepted the company’s redundancy payments.