Dunlop

[Richard Dye]

time fly's i was a driver on internal transport collecting items from the stores ,i hated nights very spooky in there

Can imagine, very different when there are lots of people and daylight!

 

[neil324]

Dunlop were an impressive company once. They seemed to make everything and the Dunlop logo appearing everywhere. From car tyres to aeroplane tyres, all sorts of rubber goods to sporting goods and even fashionable spots clothing items. Just wondering where it all went wrong.

They did seem to focus on the car tyre industry, which in my opinion would quickly became highly competitive market. Just the growing demand for cars was indicating a lot more countries were going to start manufacturing and exporting worldwide.

'Thatcherism', no state aid for struggling companies allowed.

Dunlops position of debt in the eraly 80's was not unique to Dunlop. The 70's was devasting for the whole tyre industry. 2 oil embargo's killed trye demand. Rampant inflation and multiple recessions squeezed margins. Then tyres changed from crossply to radial, requiring huge retooling costs across all factories.

Sure Dunlop compounded these problems with their own devasting mistakes. The merger with Pirelli, a slow change from crossply to radial costing market share. They was even making wooden tennis rackets until the early 80's, when the whole market had changed to acrylic.

But the fact still stands, Michelin and Pirelli was in the same amount of debt at the same time as Dunlop, but they got state aid from their governments, Dunlop did not. Dunlop was then picked off in 1985 on the cheap and broken up into little bits for huge profit.

Dunlop had a saying 'What is good for the UK is good for Dunlop', many decisions the company made, put the UK before company interests. It's tragic in their hour of need, the country was not there for them.

 

[lancepar]

Interesting thread, my only connection was visiting and sharing the place with two other surveyors every 6 months, IanJ and FrankE when we worked for Eagle Star in the 70's. I did C Zone and they did A and B Zones as we split it up between us. I didn't have a Mill yippee. My area included the M/C shop, Base stores and some other departments big and small, I can't put a name to. Also Minworth stores.
At the time the general registers we had to update were kept in some offices, I think they were halfway down the site.
I can only vaguely recall the names of people I connected with there, It's my age.

LanceP

 

[Richard Dye]

'Thatcherism', no state aid for struggling companies allowed.

Dunlops position of debt in the eraly 80's was not unique to Dunlop. The 70's was devasting for the whole tyre industry. 2 oil embargo's killed trye demand. Rampant inflation and multiple recessions squeezed margins. Then tyres changed from crossply to radial, requiring huge retooling costs across all factories.

Sure Dunlop compounded these problems with their own devasting mistakes. The merger with Pirelli, a slow change from crossply to radial costing market share. They was even making wooden tennis rackets until the early 80's, when the whole market had changed to acrylic.

But the fact still stands, Michelin and Pirelli was in the same amount of debt at the same time as Dunlop, but they got state aid from their governments, Dunlop did not. Dunlop was then picked off in 1985 on the cheap and broken up into little bits for huge profit.

Dunlop had a saying 'What is good for the UK is good for Dunlop', many decisions the company made, put the UK before company interests. It's tragic in their hour of need, the country was not there for them.

Add to some of that the rapid decline of the UK car industry, eliminating “first fit” opportunities which in those days 5 tires. Also the same with motorcycles. Cars being managed by the government, there should be a “lessons learned” there, it didn’t work! Those industries went from decline to disappeared very quickly, and the fact that Dunlop was so unresponsive to change as pointed, these are core competency’s which were never managed correctly!