SAF-Holland has acquired the majority stake in PressureGuard, a manufacturer of tyre pressure management systems to strengthen its competence in tyre pressure systems in North America.
At the same time, the company expands its product portfolio with an im-portant basic element for sophisticated digital SMART products in trailer ap-plications. In the medium term, SAF-Holland is planning to offer the PressureGuard system in Europe, China and other sales markets.
SAF-Holland sees great potential in PressureGuard’s tyre pressure management technology to provide a more comprehensive axle and suspension solution to its fleet customers in North America. By employing proprietary solutions, SAF-Holland is expanding its systems expertise as well as increasing its added value. This one-stop sourcing approach provides fleet managers with a single point of contact and ensures a fully engineered system design that addresses any compatibility issues up front. This approach also simplifies the warranty and after-sale support needed by today’s fleets.
The PressureGuard tyre management system has proven to be a durable and robust solution to meet the growing market demand for reliable automatic tyre inflation. This system includes several key features such as stainless-steel braided hoses, special cast aluminium hub caps with protection function, patent pending axle venting element, and patented high-pressure relief capabilities. The pressure-free axle structure can be integrated with all standard industry varia-tions of axle configurations, tyre sizes, rim types, axle spindle types, hub lubri-cation options, pressure settings, cabling and electrical circuits.
Detlef Borghardt, CEO, SAF-Holland, said: “This acquisition is in line with our strategy of providing complete solutions to our customers and complements our product portfolio of system solutions. This pre-assembled solution addresses many of the challenges facing fleet managers today and simplifies the ordering, production and customer service processes. By now integrating our own system, we are able to significantly increase the penetration rate of tyre pressure management systems in our axle systems. Already today, about 30% of all trailers in the US are delivered with this type of system – and the share is growing. After North America, we will offer the system in our other sales markets as of mid-2020. PressureGuard has proven itself in the market with a simple, yet robust design.”
Matthias Heiden, CFO, SAF-Holland, said: “Similar to the acquisition of Axscend in 2018, the acquisition of PressureGuard also focuses on expanding our technological capabilities. PressureGuard’s expertise seamlessly integrates with our digital SMART product platform, giving us a compelling solution for tyre management systems to offer our customers.”
