LIBERTY Tire Recycling L.L.C. refutes claims by Kumho Tire U.S.A. Inc. that it sold thousands of recalled tyres as used tires, instead of recycling them. It furthered that Kumho did not notify the company that the tyres had been recalled and were to be destroyed.
Kumho claims in a recall notice issued recently that Liberty Tire sold 7,875 Kumho Solus KH25 radial car tyres during the summer, to various tyre wholesalers in Texas, New York, North Carolina and Puerto Rico. It said that those tyres had holes drilled through the tread by Kumho to render them unusable.
Earlier, Kumho notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last April that it was amending a recall of 11,922 Kumho Solus KH25 passenger tyres, size 225/45R17, manufactured from its Vietnam plant. In the notice, Kumho also mentioned Liberty selling some of the recalled tyres to its clients.
“We were not made aware of any NHTSA safety recall that applied to these tyres when we received them last summer,” Liberty said. “Moreover, these tyres were not properly incapacitated by Kumho and were not under a ‘destroy-only’ contractual agreement.”
Liberty said it is cooperating fully with NHTSA in retrieving and recycling the tyres, likewise, ensuring that the incident will not happen again.