Retreading

When a tyre is worn down, it is possible to give it a new rubber tread and thus give it a new life. This process is called retreading. The prerequisite for this process is the careful sorting and checking of scrap tyres so that only those tyres with no damage on the inner body of steel (the tyre casing) are used. Thus the production of retreaded tyres requires a disproportionately high level of manual work.

In the past, however, it was profitable to manufacture retreaded car tyres. The savings obtained by reusing tyre casings made retreaded tyres cheaper than new tyres so retreaded tyres could be sold at reasonable prices.

But with the fully automated production of new tyres all this has changed. It is now possible to manufacture new passenger car tyres as cheaply as it is to make retreaded tyres, so this market has almost disappeared. However, retreading is still used to a certain extent when it comes to truck tyres.

The trend is that even fewer tyres will be retreaded in the future.