Pirelli, Hankook continue close rivalry in list of Leading Tyre Manufacturers

摘要

Michelin closes the gap to Bridgestone at the top of the table, while leading Chinese companies consolidate top-20 placements. Tyres & Accessories/Tyrepress has published its 2020 ranking of the world's top tyre manufacturers. Our ranking lists the top 20 tyre makers ordered by turnover from tyres in the previous calendar year. For example, Continental turned over nearly 45 billion euros in 2019, but 26.4 per cent of this was from its tyre divisions, making it the fourth largest tyre manufacturer in the world with 11.7 billion euros. The ranking presents a baseline for discussing the relative positions of the largest global players in tyre production. In 2019, we noted that Bridgestone had opened up a gap at the top of our ranking, around 2.65 billion euros ahead of second-placed Michelin in tyre turnover. This year, the French giant has reduced this gap to just over half a billion euros, reflecting its most recent acquisitions. The other significant news from the top 10 is that Pirelli has retaken sixth place ahead of South Korea's Hankook. The two firms are comfortably the closest rivals at the top table of global tyre manufacturers, with less than 0.03 billion euros of turnover separating them in 2019. The latest exchange is the third time in three years that the two premium brand manufacturers, one a heritage European brand with a strong position in the highvalue ultra high performance segment, the other often considered the newest addition to the list of multi-segment premium brands, have swapped sixth and seventh places.