At its press conference at the EIMA agricultural show yesterday, Mitas a.s. announced that as of January 2015, it will replace the Continental brand name on its original equipment agricultural tire products with Mitas branded products. The Mitas tires it supplies will bear the ‘Mitas Premium’ name; this name is being given to a new product line of agricultural radial tires for powerful machinery, and includes the HC 1000 and HC 2000 Very High Flexion (VF) tires and Super Flexion Tires (SFT). The VF tires, launched in September 2014, represent Mitas’ latest innovation.

"Mitas’ strategy is to build equity in a single brand, namely Mitas. From January 2015, all tractors and harvesters produced by major OEMs that were previously equipped with Continental tyres will be fitted with Mitas Premium tires," said Mitas CEO Jaroslav ?echura. "Mitas Premium tires bear the same premium quality and technical characteristics as Continental tires. Our OEM partners recognise this and they accepted delivery and fitment of Mitas Premium."

The tire maker negotiated deliveries of Mitas Premium tires to key agriculture machinery manufacturers such as AGCO, Argo, Claas, CNHi, John Deere and Same Deutz-Fahr throughout 2014. At Claas, newly-manufactured harvesters and tractors have already been equipped with tires from the Mitas Premium product line since October 2014. Other OEMs will start fitting Mitas Premium tires on machinery from now through to January 2015.

 “We have been manufacturing Continental tires since 2004, and we are confident that Mitas Premium has the same premium quality,” ?echura said. “We will be producing Continental-branded agriculture tires until 2019, when the license agreement expires, but in the long term, our main focus is on the Mitas brand. Our aim is to launch Mitas Premium also for the replacement market in the near future.”