Continental Barum Ltd., based in Otrokovice, is a German manufacturer of personal, freight and industrial tires from Barum, Continental, Semperit, Uniroyal, Matador, General Tire and many other brands.

Since 1992, the company has been part of the German concern Continental AG.

The tradition of tire production on the Czech territory dates back to 1932, when the first passenger and freight tires were printed on the premises of Baťa in Zlín.

Otrokovice tire factory - solemnly opened in 1972 - is currently the world's largest pneumatic tire with an annual production of almost 20 million tires ^{[1] [0] [3] [7]} Tire production in Baťa Factory

The automotive industry was on the rise in the twenties of the twentieth century and the ownership of the vehicle ceased to be the privilege of the most populous population.

However, Czechoslovak drivers were dependent on imports of expensive foreign tires.

The use of both motor vehicles and bicycles was therefore costly, and it was often the case that domestic road vehicles with home-made repaired carriages did not meet even the most basic safety requirements.

The manufacturer of low-cost and high-quality tires would have very quickly conquered the whole Czechoslovak market, which Baťa's management was certainly aware of.

Its production assortment was first expanded in this regard by the veloplášť and veloduše which, after the delivery of the respective machinery, began to be manufactured in Zlín in 1931.

The price of one coat was by half lower compared to competing products, the interest on the part of the consumers was great and daily production has increased from the original 400 to 2000 tires.

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The production of car tires was launched in 1932.

The initial incentive to expand the range of manufactured goods also to automobile tires was to reduce the high costs of buying expensive tire goods needed to transport the company goods to buyers and German ports for loading or unloading.

the soil needed to increase the slaughtered bumper.

In April, the first good 32x6 tires were pressed.

Tomáš Baťa ordered these first coats to immediately get his Lincoln passenger car, with whom he went to the industrial conference in Luhačovice, where he introduced the new product to his colleagues and friends.

In the months to come, the number of manufactured sizes was still rising, but prices fell.

For an idea: in 1931 the cloak of size 32x6 stood at CZK 2500, in 1933 Baťa sold it for 889 CZK.

In 1933, 68,000 tires were produced in Zlín; their pre-war peak reached production in 1939, when the press left 250,000 units.

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In the war years, rubber gloves caused great shortages of key raw materials.

Increased emphasis was placed on the use of regenerated or synthetic rubber, which German scientists have been working hard for in the 1930s.

However, despite all the raw materials supply situation, it was not ideal, which eventually also signed a decline in production - for example, in 1941 the annual production dropped to 77,700 pieces of tires, in 1945 to only 27,800 pieces.

^[4] The birth of Continental Barum s. r.o

Until 1989, the Red Enterprise (since 1986 renamed the Barum - Red October) was subordinated to the General Directorate of the Czech Rubber and Plastics Plant in Gottwaldov (ČZGP).

The effort to strengthen democratic principles in the management of individual rubber national enterprises has prompted the replacement of the CAGG by the state-owned firm Barum, based in Gottwald, which was also briefly subordinated to a slave national enterprise.

After twenty years of static immutable arrangement, the rubber industry experienced a change that marked the beginning of a series of steps that led first to the complete independence of the company (6/1990 - State Barum, Otrokovice) and shortly afterwards to the founding of a joint stock company (11/1990 - Barum, Otrokovice as).

All these steps were aimed at preparing the privatization of the slave enterprise.

About 1990, 85% of the global tire market was dominated by only eight companies.

The turnover of each one was ten to twenty times higher than the turnovers of the slave enterprise.

The survival of such a small company in the competition of rubber giants appeared to be impossible in the longer term.

Many similarly small businesses have changed their owners and switched to the hands of large companies - the shape of the world's tire industry has transformed itself into a pure oligopoly.

In order to be successful in this environment, the company had to offer its customers and customers a wide range of products at the appropriate price and quality levels, which were conditions that one small independent firm did not have in view of the high cost of research and development to do so.

In order for the slave business to be competitive and a successful future, it was necessary to find a strategic partner amongst the six largest world companies - Michelin, Goodyear, Bridgestone, Sumitomo, Continental and Pirelli- to provide the necessary capital and access to new technologies.

In the right direction negotiations with the Continent of Germany have taken place since the beginning, which showed the most serious interest in finding common ground on possible co-operation.

The lengthy and demanding negotiations eventually celebrated success and in 1992 a contract was signed with the German group, which led to the creation of the second largest joint venture in the Czech Republic- Barum Continental spol.

s ro - which officially started operating on March 1, 1993.

Effective January 1, 2013, the company's business name was changed to Continental Barum sro Cooperation with a strong foreign company, successfully operating in the global market environment, provided the slave company with access to modern technology and advanced know-how.

As shown in Table 2, tire production has risen steadily from year to year, with a virtually constant number of employees.

Not even catastrophic floods in July 1997, during which the company suffered damage of CZK 1 billion, did not stop the progressive growth of the company.

In 1999, annual production exceeded 11 million tire for passenger cars.

Three years later, production began in a new high-tech cell operation designed to produce the most demanding and most sophisticated mantles of the concern.

In the same year, more than 15 million cloaks were produced.

In 2008, ContiSeal tires began to be produced in Otrokovice to allow them to continue driving even in the case of a tread hole History of the National Enterprise Rudý říjen

n May 1945, the National Local Committee in Zlín decided to establish a national administration in Baťa and after signing the decrees of the President, the nationalized property of the Baťa family was transferred to the state as a Baťa national enterprise.

Tire production was severely limited at the end of the war, and so the first post-war years were marked by the restoration and normalization of the production process.

In 1947, 278,100 tires were produced in Zlín, and one year later even 323,300.

Even if we add the production of other rubber plants in Czechoslovakia, the number of tires produced could not even fully satisfy the need for the first post-war years because of the poor distribution.

The response to this was a proposal to establish an organization whose task would be to ensure the joint distribution of Czechoslovak tires and other rubber products.

The proposal was approved by the leaders of the interested national companies Baťa, Kudrnáč - Rubena, Matador, Michelin- Mitas in 1947 and from the initial letters of individual companies a trademark of BARUM was established, under which all rubber products in Czechoslovakia were sold for the next forty years.

The owner of the newly established trademark was Baťa Zlín, which contributed 58% to the nationwide rubber production.

On January 1, 1949, the Bata National Company was renamed the Svit National Enterprise.

In the next few years, production units were separated from Svita and independent national enterprises were created.

Initially, the machine-building was separated in 1950 and the ZPS national enterprise was founded, two years later the construction company Stavosvit was born, and finally, in 1953, the production of tires and other rubber products was transferred to the Red Enterprise in October.

The pace of annual tire production in Czechoslovakia was inadequate due to the increasing number of vehicles - the calculation in the 1957 prospective study stated that to cover all domestic demand, tire production would have to increase threefold by 1970.

Each of the Czechoslovakian tire companies offered some possibilities to extend the production, for example through small mechanization, by introducing more powerful machines, by adding machinery, by intensifying work or by using free space, but in any case the expected output could not be achieved.

The production in the Red October itself was run on obsolete machines, which often remembered the time of the first Zlín coats and souls.

She suffered both work performance and quality.

All these problems could only be solved in the future by the construction of a brand new modern tire.

In 1963, it was definitely decided to build a new pneumatic plant in Otrokovice-Kučovaniny, which was advantageous both from the economic (low cost of imports of key raw materials) and from the personnel point of view (long-term tradition of rubber production in the region and sufficient qualified labor force).

Construction began in 1966 and plans to create one of the largest and most modern plants in Central Europe with an annual production capacity of more than 2.5 million tires.

The entire construction was solved in its most unusual and innovative way: all production cells - warehouses, production, sanitary facilities, auxiliary plants, workshops - were combined within one production block of 480 x 270 meters.

The roof of this monoblock would cover 16 football fields.

Similarly, large-scale construction did not exist in the then Czechoslovakia.

Total construction costs climbed to one billion crowns.

The factory was equipped with the most advanced domestic and foreign equipment, which enabled, among other things, the production of modern personal radial jackets.

The first radial tire 155-14 OR 6 was pressed in the new race in the presence of the Minister of Industry of Oldřich Svačin in 1971.

A year later, namely on May 3, 1972, Otrokovice hosted the leaders of the state and the Communist Party headed by Gustav Husák, Lubomír Strougal and Alois Indra to run a ceremony in a brand new slave factory.

By the decision of the Minister of Industry of the Czechoslovak Republic, with effect from 1 August 1973, the headquarters of the national enterprise Red Rudník from Gottwaldov to Otrokovice was transferred.

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