RAMAT-HASHERON, Israel (March 9, 2010) — Alliance Tire & Rubber Co. Ltd. has sold equipment for passenger and truck radial production at its Hadera, Israel, plant, completing the phase-out of these production lines, according to Pelmar Engineering Ltd., which bought the equipment.
Alliance phased out these product lines, Pelmar said, because of “tough competition coming from low-cost foreign tire manufacturers and almost non-existence of import duties on tires in Israel.”
The sale of the equipment—tire builders, component processors, curing presses and a uniformity machine—coincides with Alliance announcements of the past year that it was investing in Hadera to upgrade and expand that plant's radial farm and off-the-road tire capacity.
Alliance was bought in July 2007 by Indian investors with backing from international financiers Warburg-Pincus L.L.C. The new owners built a tire plant in Tirunelveli, India, for lower-value farm and OTR tires, freeing up Hadera to concentrate on radials. The Tirunelveli plant came on stream last year prior to Alliance's purchase of certain worldwide OTR tire-related assets of GPX International Inc.
Ramat-Hasheron-based Pelmar is a leading refurbisher of used tire and rubber processing machinery.