Vacu-Lug Traction Tyres is celebrating a two-year anniversary relationship with Westlake Tyres and recently launched a new “streamlined” tyre range.
This new Westlake truck and bus tyre range was showcased at the recent IAA show in Hanover. The company marketing Westlake tyres in the UK is Zenises, whose remit is to focus on European markets, and is responsible for distributing Westlake products in certain territories aiming primarily to position the brand within the ‘premium economy’ tyre sector.
Zenises’ general manager Jorge Crespo says the relationship between Vacu-Lug and Westlake is a great success.
“The relationship has been very fruitful and productive – there’s a good match between Vacu-Lug and Westlake regarding the product range and strategic intent. We are delighted with how the partnership is working.”
Crespo also praises the professionalism of the Vacu-Lug products and staff.
“We rate Vacu-Lug very highly. Their knowledge of the market is exceptional along with their understanding of the customer base and its business needs.”
Crespo says that Westlake has been working very hard from a manufacturing and design perspective to make a great product but the products’ success has been significantly assisted by Vacu-Lug’s marketing and brand positioning.
The Westlake range, produced by one of the world’s ‘Top 5’ truck tyre manufacturers, has been streamlined and focused increasingly on Europe over the last two or three years as opposed to many other global tyre brands, argues Crespo.
“For the future our focus is on Europe. The CEO of the factory has visited here this year and we regularly hold meetings with our European partners to underline our strategic intent to develop products based on European requirements.”
Westlake Tyres have experienced a rapid growth in UK sales over the last two years, with their portfolio proving popular with not just end-users, but fleet operators alike.
And according to Crespo, the UK is playing a strong part in new product development.
“There are some sizes and patterns that are specific to the UK. Because of Vacu-Lug’s professionalism, and also because of our sales growth in the UK, I think the product range now really fits well with Vacu-Lug’s portfolio.”
In terms of the new tyre range, Crespo says that the production and design technology is of a higher level due to the huge investment that has been made in the manufacturing processes in the last few years with a newly expanded world class research and development centre due to open in 2015.
“All the processes have been improved and Westlake is a great product“, says Crespo. “We benchmark any new tyre with competitor ‘premium’ brands and they come out very well in terms of quality performance and value for money.”