Tire Technology Expo announces award winners

ERJ staff report (DS)

Hamburg, Germany - Pirelli, VMI, Sumitomo won awards at the Tire Technology Expo event last night. Two further companies, STL and Coda Development also won awards.

VMI won the award for Tyre innovation for its new MAXX tyre building machine currently installed at Nokian Tyres in Tampere, Finland.

Sumitomo Rubber Industries won the award for Environmental Technology of the year for the Enasave 97 research project. This resulted in a tyre which uses minimal amounts of oil-derived materials. Currently, 97 percent of the tyre is from renewable resources, and the company hopes to raise that to 100 percent in the near future.

Pirelli won the award for tyre company of the year for its work in innovations such as Mirs-2 and continuous mixing.

The self-inflating tyre by Coda Development was named as tyre technology of the year, ahead of Pirelli's CyberTire and Goodyear's Optigrip products.

STL was named as tyre industry supplier of the year for its new test track and facilities.

The awards were presented at a dinner in Hamburg during the Tire Technology Expo. A wide-ranging judging panel decided on the award winners from a shortlist of three or four contenders.

The judging panel for the awards comprises:

DI Manfred Haider,

transportation infrastructure technologies, Arsenal Research

Victor Underburg, head

of vehicle stability and TPMS, Audi

Marco Pesce, head of

vehicle systems, Centro Ricerche Fiat

Oliver Scholz,

Fraunhofer Institut

Dr John Bullas,

research consultant, Atkins Highways & Transportation

Damian Harty, chief

dynamics engineer, Prodrive

Guy Edington, director

of technology at Standard Testing Laboratories, ex-managing director at KumhoAmericaTechnicalCenter

Oluremi Olatunbosun,

head of the automotive laboratory at the University of Birmingham, UK

Gaetano

'Guy' Mannino, ex-president and CEO of Pirelli North America, now

president and CEO of Verdek

Walter Reithmaier,

general manager, vehicle dynamics, TÃœV SÃœD

Roger Williams,

consultant, ex-technical director at Dunlop?

Joe Walter, adjunct

professor, University of Akron College of Engineering, ex-managing director of

Bridgestone Technical Centre Europe

 

research scientist at the

National Road and Transport Research Institute

(VTI)

Adam Gavine, editor, Tire Technology International?

Sean Kane, founder,

Safety Research & Strategies

Paul Haney, InfoTyre

Dr Ali Ansarifar, Loughborough University, UK

Sean Kane, Safety

Research & Strategies Inc