The tyre manufacturer Bridgestone has revealed that their tyre prices are set to rise in Europe. The consumer, speciality, and commercial tyres are set to rise from October 2010 by 3% to 6%.

We recently covered the procurement process of natural rubber and talked about how the increase in the prices for raw materials may drive up tyre prices for consumers.

Makio Ohashi, CEO and President of Bridgestone Europe, said: “The increase in the cost in raw materials has continued and reached a historically high level. We have to recover some of those costs by this price increase and most probably further increases will be necessary in the coming year.”

He continued: “Having encouraging signs of demand recovery trend in many tyre segments, we have already been operating all of our European tyre plants at full production and the production expansion of new East European plants is in progress as planned.

“In order to continue fulfilling our commitment to European market, we have to make this sensible decision to increase prices and maintain a sound and solid business foundation.” ¹

This now looks set to be the case and it will be interesting if others follow and how the market reacts. Last time around it was Michelin stating their bit on the environmental issues surrounding tyres.

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1. Official Press Release Source: http://www.bridgestone.eu/press/press-releases/all/2010/bridgestone-europe-announces-price-increases-in-october-2010 [↩]

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