King of the road

Through his holding company Zenises Group, Haarjeev Kandhari bought truck tyre retreader Vaculug Ltd in July 2018, and is now chairman of both businesses.

Zenises purchased Vaculug along with its equipment and its 11-acre site in Grantham. Several large, much-needed capital investments in equipment and technology have since been made to ensure the business remains the biggest and most advanced independent retreader in Europe.

The firm has also employed around 50 new staff, including sales and business development director Perry Buckley, commercial director Phil West and processes and business excellence manager Mark Holloway, all of whom used to work for competitor Bandvulc.

Treading carefully

A devout Sikh, Kandhari takes a highly ethical approach to business and environmental practices and donates 10% of profits to charity. He also gives £1 for every tyre sold to the Oneness Education Initiative, which helps educate children in developing countries who cannot access schools.

The Retread Process

After a rigorous set of tests to check the integrity of the casing, the new tread and sidewall are applied to the casing, which is then cured in a press just like a new tyre. The tyre is heated for up to two hours at 155C while inflated at to up to 300psi.

This ensures the rubber is correctly vulcanised, resulting in a tyre with the equivalent tread pattern and depth that can be regrooved like a new tyre.

Vaculug makes both hot cure and cold cure tyres for drive and trailer axles – new tyres are still preferred on steer axles. The UK market is predominantly hot cure, though Vaculug continues to make a small range of cold retreads for certain tread patterns.

A first retread is still considered a premium product for the long-haul fleet market, while the second life is used for regional operations and the third and usually last retread is often destined for the agricultural market.

RUBBER SOUL: Devout Sikh Haarjeev Kandhari takes an ethical approach to business and donates a percentage of profits to good causes. He is the fourth generation of his family in the tyre business

One of the main reasons for investing in an ailing retread tyre manufacturer is the huge savings in energy and raw materials it offers. A retread uses only 20kg of raw materials, compared with 65kg for a new tyre, and 70 litres less oil are used in its manufacture. While hot cure retreading remains an energy-intensive process, reusing a casing up to three times greatly reduces the environmental impact.

According to independent research, Vaculug’s annual production of 200,000 tyres saves 4,099,000kgs of rubber, 1,483,420kgs of steel, 9,499,260kgs of CO 2 and 5,562,825kgs of oil every year. It already has a policy of sending zero waste to landfill and is committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The limiting factor in production capacity is the presses; retreading requires time, temperature and pressure and the process cannot be rushed. Vaculug is installing five new presses to increase its output to meet demand.

Vaculug is also studying ways to cut emissions of harmful rubber particulates produced by tyres as they wear, something that will become an even bigger issue as zero tailpipe emissions vehicles come on stream.

Kandhari is the fourth generation of his family to make or sell tyres. “My family has been in tyres for years,” he says. “We were the largest retreader in the Middle East and Africa at one time. Vaculug was my customer for many years as we sold them Westlake tyres – we have been the distributor for Westlake out of China for over 20 years.

“So, the owners of Vaculug approached us and asked if we would like to buy the business. They were third generation and were in their 60s and wanted an exit. It was a sustainability play for me because retreads and fleet management are important.

“I have three kids and I bought Vaculug for them.”

Market bounce

Retreads have had mixed fortunes in the UK over the years, with some tyre companies pulling out because imports of cheap new tyres from China were undercutting retreads on price. Others, such as Continental, which bought Bandvulc in 2016, and Bridgestone, which acquired Bulldog and Bandag in 2005 and 2006, have stuck with and invested in retreads, and many leading hauliers and supermarket fleets use them on their drive and trailer axles. Vaculug has long relationships with Pirelli and Hankook and continues to develop advanced tread compounds and patterns for their retread products.

An EU import tariff on Chinese tyres introduced in 2018 together with rising commodity and energy costs levelled the playing field somewhat, rewarding those who kept faith with retreads as new tyre prices began to increase.

“I don’t think the tax priced them out completely and there are still people bringing in Chinese tyres,” says Kandhari. “Chinese manufacturers like Linglong, Century and Westlake have moved their factories to Thailand to get over that barrier. They have also raised their prices, which has helped us.”

Vaculug still sells new Westlake tyres, which Kandhari calls a “premium Chinese tyre that will compete with

VACULUG: A BRIEF HISTORY

Europe’s largest independent tyre retreader, Vaculug was established by Lewis Morley in Grantham in 1950 to retread tractor tyres using a method he had seen on a visit to the US. The business quickly expanded and within a few years the Duramold manufacturing process was being used under licence in 32 countries around the world.

Increased demand in the UK soon saw the closure of the original site in Great Ponton, Lincolnshire and the consolidation of all manufacturing at a larger plant nearby in Great Gonerby.

The 1980s saw several developments in tread design and in the 1990s Vaculug developed new techniques for casing inspection, including ultrasound scanning.

The millennium saw Vaculug respond to increasing demand for fleet management systems by developing the Vaculug Management System (VMS), which set a new benchmark in advanced tyre management.

A close working relationship with Pirelli (now Prometeon) began in 2006 with the manufacture of the Pirelli Novateck range of retread tyres.

Production of Hankook’s Alphatread truck tyre range – a bead-to-bead set of retread tyres in four of the most popular sizes – began in 2018. The R-DH05 pattern mirrors Hankook’s existing DH05 pattern and uses a unique compound to provide excellent wet and dry performance, while its tear-resistant tread design helps to reduce the chance of delamination.

In 2021 Vaculug introduced the Kinetik KT01, the first retread that exceeds the A rating for rolling resistance without affecting tyre life. Currently retreads are not required to comply with EU requirements to carry A to E ratings for wet grip, rolling resistance and noise.

any other premium tyre”, to several major UK fleets. “It’s a good product,” he asserts. “They are the fourth largest truck tyre manufacturer in the world and number one in China – you don’t get to that level without making a quality product.”

Vaculug manages the tyres for almost 60,000 vehicles, many of which are still based on price per kilometre (PPK) or price per vehicle (PPV) contracts, despite these falling out of favour with some tyre companies who miscalculated the costs and made losses on fixed-price deals. “On PPK and PPV I’m taking the risk, so if I’m putting Westlake on that means it is a good tyre,” says Kandhari. “It doesn’t make sense for me to use cheap Chinese tyres because I don’t get the casing back and it doesn’t last as long.”

Vaculug retreads all premium tyre casings including Westlake, with the decision on whether or not a casing is suitable for remanufacturing being based on a detailed inspection of each casing. “We have worked with Westlake to develop that casing,” says Kandhari. “All the testing we do with our customers gets fed back to Westlake and they have been a good partner with us for over 20 years.”

In the black?

Both new and retread tyre prices have increased as a result of the spike in energy costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but “not enough” according to Kandhari. “We are a fairly energy-intensive business and it is difficult,” he says.

“Last year we decided to honour PPK and PPV contracts even though they all have clauses saying we can vary prices. So we lost money on certain contracts but that was a conscious decision to take the hit.

“At some point that will have to stop as energy prices continue to rocket and we took another hit in April [when the government cut its energy price support] so I guess we will have to have a price increase. Rubber and freight costs have all gone up so it’s been crazy.

“We didn’t increase our prices enough last year but this year we will have to see. We have already been told by our tyre suppliers that prices will increase.”

Vaculug’s sales volumes are split almost equally between fleet customers on a tyre management contract and retail sales through dealers.

“This year the plan is to go to 60% of sales on contract,” says Kandhari. “This is a contract business and we only get the free sales because of the contracts.”

Emergency service

One of Vaculug’s main distributors is Tructyre, which is part of Euromaster. It has access to almost 600 tyre service locations across the UK and one of its major supermarket fleet customers is guaranteed a breakdown response time of 45 minutes anywhere in the UK.

One of Vaculug’s big advantages when negotiating with fleets is that it is independent of the major tyre companies and so can fit whatever brand of new tyre on the steer axle that the customer wants.

“I don’t care – my preferences are Westlake, Pirelli, Hankook or GT but if you want Goodyear I will supply Goodyear,” says Kandhari. “My interest is not in supplying the new tyre because I’m not making any money there. I need to supply the best tyre for the application, especially on a PPK or PPV contract.

“On one contract we went from Westlake to Pirelli because on a PPK basis Pirelli was cheaper as on that application they lasted longer.”

Despite the low margins in tyre manufacturing, Kandhari has been trying hard to keep a lid on Vaculug’s tyre prices, but he describes the rates paid for emergency tyre fitting as “a joke”.

“I have a plumber come to my house and he will charge me £400 to fix something,” he says. “I have a qualified tyre fitter changing a tyre by the side of a motorway at 2am and he gets £40. That’s our fault as an industry and we should raise the price.” n