TyrePro: Simply bigger and better

TyrePro has been an institution on the Namibian road rubber landscape for three decades, although locals may also know the organisation by pervious names including Tyres 2000 and Dunlop Zone.

Having grown over the years to now employing about 120 Namibians, with 10 branches countrywide, TyrePro has become a dominant presence when it comes to quality tyres.

The company is the sole distributor for all Dunlop products in Namibia, with an agreement signed with manufacturers in Japan enabling TyrePro to offer its clients the only effective warrantees on their products, according to operations director Lambert Vos.

Vos is proud of the fully Namibian enterprise, pointing out that all shareholders are Namibian, all directors are Namibian, and, of course, so is the vast majority of the skilled workforce in TyrePro's employ.

“We do tyres,” he told the My.Na Cars people's passenger princess Diana Master during her recent visit to the massive premises at 13 Van Der Bijl Street in Windhoek’s Northern Industrial Area.

“Anything to do with tyres, we can assist you with it,” he said.

“We are not your normal retail shop,” he added. “From fitting, balancing, valves, wheel alignment and rotational services, we do anything related to tyres."



For the big boys

Truck owners are accommodated at the site which features enough turning room for even the massive 18-wheelers, which can have all their tyres replaced at once. Not only the big boys will find what they want at TyrePro, which stocks tyres for motorbikes to commercial vehicles used in mining and exploration, to its agricultural range geared to equip bigger implements and tractors with the best.

Talk to dedicated professionals like sales advisor Gad Katjoho, who comes out to check your automobile in the parking lot before advising what tyres would work best. Choice is left to the customer as TyrePro not only stocks Dunlop, but also Apollo, Continental, Michelin and BFGoodrich, Vos explained.

Katjoho may escort you to have your choice of tyres properly fitted by a colleague like wheel alignment technician Linus Shiponeni, who knows how to use the computer software and the sensors mounted on the car lift.

“You need to know where to adjust,” he explained to Master, as well as that most Toyota bakkies only get adjustments to the front wheels, while other makes like Mercedes will need adjustment to the rear wheels as well.



Tech paired with human know-how

Scrap and fit machines for removing spent tyres from rims, balancing machines and wheel alignment bays are ready for use at TyrePro. All that technology and human know-how is backed up by warehouses full of tyres.

Stock controller Secilia Kambonde knows exactly where any of the thousands of tyres imported each month is stored, and where each set can be found in the giant main warehouse, using the in-house computerised system when needed.

According to Vos, the Namibian tyre business is on the road to recovery, approaching pre-2016 levels before the country started descending into recession.

Followed by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and with its associated lockdowns, the tyre industry has had a difficult few years, he explained.

“No one was on the roads during lockdown,” he said. Adding to the difficulty was international trade relations hampering exports from China, the source of most of the rubber used in tyre manufacturing. More recently, the war involving Russia has also put restrictions on sources of carbon black, also used in the manufacture of tyres, and exclusively supplied by that country. “Production has been under pressure worldwide,” Vos said, “and that influences price".