While our third bad winter in a row didn’t materialise here in Ireland in the past year, European winter tyre sales increased to over 92 million.<\/p>\n
A total of 73.8 million (+12.8 per cent) winter passenger car and 4×4 tyres were sold in Western Europe last year and a further 18.7 million (+10.7 per cent) in Central\u00a0Europe.<\/p>\n
Continental believes that last year\u2019s sale of\u00a092.5 million units is a \u2018peak\u2019 for winter tyres. Continental says it expects sales to stabilise at around\u00a090 million by 2015.\u00a0That’s more than 40 per cent of this sales,\u00a0increasing by about 10 million year-on-year. This year, the German manufacturer anticipates that both the Western and Central\u00a0European markets to grow.<\/p>\n
A Continental spokesperson said: \u201cLast year, around 23 million more tyres were sold in Europe than in 2007, the year before the economic and\u00a0financial crisis. Market researchers at Continental calculated a figure\u00a0of 218 million. At more than 90 million, winter tyres already make up\u00a0.\u201d<\/p>\n
What about Ireland? Well there is no doubt that last winter tyre importers did get caught with winter tyres due to lower than expected demand because of the milder winter. It is doubtful that those importers will stock as many winter tyres this season.<\/p>\n
However, our exceptionally wet spring and summer has strengthened the case for all-season tyres. From a distributors point of view, the risk of having to carry over large stocks of winter tyres, should not exist with all-season tyres. A good sales person will up-sell all-season tyres in all but the very best summer weather, which is very rare indeed.<\/p>\n
In the next issue of the Tyre Trade Journal, we feature Winter and All-Season Tyres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While our third bad winter in a row didn’t materialise here in Ireland in the past year, European winter tyre sales increased to over 92 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[338],"class_list":["post-2036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-winter-tyre"],"yoast_head":"\n