Piero has been working at BKT since 2010 and today he is Field Engineer Manager at BKT Europe. His job consists in testing tires – he monitors the tires’ performance and the quality of BKT’s products. 

Welcome back to Global Trends, Piero, come and join us!

Gentlemen, delighted to have you all back! Piero, a very warm welcome to the show. 

Yes, thank you!

I see you are excited; well, we are very excited to have you with us! You have been listening to Paul and Jonathan, I am sure, so let’s find out what do you think on this subject, too! 

What I’d like to ask, now I’ve got the three of you together, is this: you’re all suppliers to the industry, so how can you best advocate or facilitate the adoption and integration of alternative energies?

Piero, let’s hear from you first.

Well, we need to think about energy efficiency overall. For suppliers like us, we need to assure our customers that the embedded energy consumed by the whole value chain, then we need to think about the energy that’s used not just digging material out of the ground, and in processing, but also what’s used to produce the equipment, the consumables, that makes it all possible.

So, with BKT as a tire manufacturer, what does that look like?

We are ourselves using renewable energy in the production of our tires. But we can also look at tire efficiency, ratings, load capacity, and so on. Normally, in OTR, we talk about star rating, which is the capacity of the tires to take load. Fifteen years ago, we were at one star rating, now we’re at three stars.

We also need to consider how these new energies affect our own products. Electric trucks, with their batteries, might need to carry more load. We need to change the rating – two stars to three stars. 

These factors affect production and development. The carcass will be different, we have different belting, we need to reconsider the compound formulation.

In a very broad way, alternative energy means better efficiency. The same work in a reduced time, so we can increase productivity. The key thing is that we’re ready for the energy transition, to help our customers be ready for it too.