The market demand for tire molds which are consumables is positively correlated with tire output. From 2012 to 2016, the demand for tire mold remained sluggish, arising from a slowdown in growth rate of Chinese tire market. The tire market began to rebound in 2017, being a boon for the market growth of tire molds whose the year-2017 output posted 366,000 sets with a year-on-year increase of 2%. In 2018, China’s automobile output and sales volume fell for the first time, accompanied by the anti-dumping and countervailing investigations launched by the United States and the EU against Chinese tires, China’s tire output showed its first negative growth in the past two decades. Consequently, China’s tire mold output edged down by 0.8%. In the future, Chinese tire molds will maintain steady growth along with the tire market.

At present, the increment of tire molds mainly comes from the replacement demand. On the one hand, the huge global and Chinese automobile markets favor the development of tire molds; on the other hand, the faster update of tire tread drives higher and higher tire mold renewal rate.

Tire mold manufacturers fall into the mold companies affiliated to tire makers and the third-party professional tire mold companies. To protect the intellectual property rights, the tire molds of France-based Michelin, the US-based Goodyear and the like, which are subordinate to tire makers, are generally used by themselves and not for sale. The international professional tire mold manufacturers such as the US-based QUALITY and German AZ are mostly family-owned enterprises, producing the expensive high-grade tire molds for the global high-end tire mold market.

Given high customization of tire molds, mold manufacturers mostly operate in a small scale. The largest mold makers on the market by capacity include China-based Himile Mechanical Science & Technology (Shandong) and Greatoo Intelligent Equipment, German HEBERT, and South Korean SAEHAN. Among them, Himile Mechanical Science & Technology (Shandong) has become the world’s tire mold R&D and production base, teamed up with 62 of the world’s top 75 tire manufacturers, and acted as the quality tire mold supplier of the world’s top three tire giants Michelin, Bridgestone and Goodyear with the international market share of 25%-30% and the export value contribution of more than 90% in China.

The report highlights the following:
Global tire mold market (size, structure, key enterprises, etc.);
China tire mold market (development history, market size & structure, supply and demand, development trends, etc.);
Global tire market (size, ranking of key players, status quo of the US and European markets, etc.);
Chinese tire market (size, output and structure, key enterprises, etc.);
4 global and 13 Chinese companies (tire mold business, R&D and future planning, etc.)