Sailun Tyres has launched two new passenger car tyres developed particularly for the European market in an event held in the Brittany village of Lohéac, France. The tyres both appear in the company’s Atrezzo PCR line; the Atrezzo Elite asymmetrical high performance tread and the Atrezzo Eco, designed as a more eco-friendly alternative to sit below the Elite in terms of size profile. Compared to their predecessor, the 90-size SH-402, the tyres both have patterns in keeping with current market trends. During the presentation of the two new tyres, Sailun also gave details of its first all-season tyre, the Atrezo 4 Seasons, which has also been launched in five sizes. The event follows Sailun’s collaborative events in Lohéac and Val d’Isère with its French distributor DistriCash, though this time the manufacturer was “standing alone,” in the words of Sailun Jinyu (Europe) managing director Martin West, with guests attending from across Europe.
During the Lohéac event, Tyres & Accessories had plenty of opportunity to try out the tyres, alongside the Sailun ZSR UHP tyre launched in 2014, in three separate tests conducted around Lohéac’s historic racetrack. The Atrezzo Elite was put through its paces on Renault Clios on a handling circuit, around which drivers maintained a constant speed, demonstrating the tyre’s dry handling stability around the tighter corners. The Atrezzo Eco was fitted to two of Renault’s most economical cars, the Twingo and the all-electric Zoe, for a wet braking test, showing its safety characteristics for typical city driving. Finally, the ZSR was tested again on a full track fitted to a range of tuned Renault Clio and Megane RS models, on which Lohéac’s team of professional drivers applauded the tyre’s “progressive” grip.
Available in 35 sizes, Sailun states that the Atrezzo Elite is designed to meet European market expectations for small and medium high performance cars. Sailun’s senior product marketing manager, Michael Eckert, explains: “The Atrezzo Elite is a new asymmetric high performance tyre for compact and mid-size cars. The Elite has a very high overall driving performance level on both dry and wet-road conditions. It has a very special pattern design with a solid outer shoulder part and a specific compound mixture for increased dynamic handling and braking.”
（Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sailun Tyres, Michael Eckert）
The tyre features an asymmetric tread pattern with three uniform centre ribs and robust shoulder blocks. These technical features work to maximise the effective contact patch resulting on good handling performance on dry roads. Along with the four circumferential grooves, the pattern also features diagonal sweeping channels through which water can be dispersed. These lateral grooves provide anti-hydroplaning characteristics, and taken together increase grip on wet roads. The tyre compound includes highly dispersible micro-Silica and advanced styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), developed for high performance handling. The tyre is initially available in 35 sizes.
The Atrezzo Eco has a similar feel to the Elite, with a slimmer three-groove pattern rather than four grooves; the tyre has been developed to focus on the more economical end of the compact car market. Available in 27 sizes, Eckert, explains: “The Atrezzo Eco is a specially developed high performance fuel-saving tyre for smaller city-cars and compact vehicles and is equipped with an optimised pattern design. The new tread delivers optimal safety levels even under wet road conditions – it also comes along with low rolling resistance compound for better fuel economy and very low noise. In addition it offers very high steering response and excellent braking.”
The tyre has a number of features with which to achieve these performance goals. For wet performance, the tyre has three open longitudinal grooves, which combine with lateral slots to enhance water drainage and grip. Sipes in the pattern also help the tyre to resist aquaplaning at high speed. The twin centre band ribs created by the three longitudinal grooves combine with solid shoulder blocks for greater stiffness, helping the tyre to improve steering performance and handling stability while reducing rolling resistance. The tread compound has been formulated to increase the tyre’s eco-friendly characteristics, making it both fuel efficient and long lasting, according to Sailun.
In addition to the two new tyres tested at Lohéac, Sailun also announced the launch of a third pattern designed to meet European market demand – this time in the growing all-season tyre segment. The Atrezzo 4 Seasons will be available initially in a small run of five sizes. Eckert, explains: “This is a completely new revolutionary all-season tyre, available in most relevant sizes. Specially designed asymmetric pattern layout and tread compound for ensuring outstanding handling and braking performance also under severe and demanding road- and weather-conditions throughout whole year. It also features lateral zig-zag grooves and sipes for high traction on snow and ice – and a compact outer shoulder blocks for ensuring high steering response whiles dynamic driving on dry surface.”
The tyre has an original, highly asymmetrical pattern that Sailun says will give the tyre performance all year round. It features new three-dimensional grooves and sipes with zig-zag shaped lateral grooves, which combine to maximise biting edges for both snow and wet performance. Meanwhile the strong square outside pattern blocks are designed to enhance dry handling performance across the life of the tyre.Sailun Group overviewThe Sailun Group has continued to develop at a fast pace, with the recent announcement that the Maxam brand would be brought under the control of Sailun Europe’s Birmingham, UK base, with MD Martin West as the newly installed global managing director. The group is continuing to develop its operations in the Far East too, with a broadened production base now joined by a Vietnam factory. Eckert explained that this factory, employing 1,198 personnel with a production capacity of six million passenger car and light truck tyres, would export “mainly to the US”. In total, the manufacturer now has a capacity of 41.6 million PCR tyres and 7.6 million TBR tyres across five facilities in Dongying, Shenyang, Qingdao and Vietnam.
The group also has a Thailand rubber plantation (Thaihua Rayong Rubber), an R&D Centre in Qingdao – which has a partnership with the city’s University of Science and Technology and links to centres in the UK and USA – and has started work on a facility in Dongying that it claims will be “China’s largest specialised outdoor testing track,” Eckert adds. The group has budgeted “more than 1.5 billion RMB” (over £155 million) for developing the 2.4sqkm site, and says construction will take a “minimum of three years”.
In terms of sales growth, the Sailun Group has an upward trajectory too. While growth has been swift since 2008, Sailun states that it grew 37 per cent in 2014, and claims a global industry ranking of 18th by turnover. The meteoric rise has been supported by acquisitions – in 2012, the group acquired Senyang Peace Dove Tyre, while as of 2014, the Group’s data includes Jinyu Industrial, Goma Group and the UK’s Kings Road Tyres Group. T&A visited the manufacturer’s Qingdao base in 2014, and was shown the most recent addition to its operations, which Eckert shows as further evidence of Sailun’s evolution; the Group’s robotic warehouse facility currently holds “up to 1.2 million tyres”, with “as many as 50,000 tyres” entering and leaving on a single day.
