In a radio dialogue, the businessman Roberto Mendez recognized that both multinationals and national brands obtained extraordinary returns on tire sales, reaching up to 70 percent. The CEO of Neumen stressed: “I say that the multinationals were stealing and we entrepreneurs were stealing because we have a brand that was not real.” “I see Sturzenegger’s point well when he says that he is going to force all companies to have a normal profitability that would be around 20 percent. At one point we were turning to 60 or 70 percent,” he acknowledged with Maximiliano Montenegro in Now Play.
A week ago, the Argentine Factory of Rubberized Fabrics (FATE)a historic tire producing company with more than 80 years of industrial presence in the country, permanently closed its main plant in Virreyes, Buenos Aires district of San Fernando, in an outcome that leaves around 920 workers without direct employment and threatens thousands of jobs linked to suppliers and associated services. The decision was communicated by the company through a notice placed at the entrances to the plant, where it was announced that tire production would cease.
Business and union sources agreed that The closure was not a sudden event but the result of a structural crisis that worsened in recent yearsalthough it gained visibility in the first two of the administration of Javier Milei. According to several reports, the company had already resorted to a crisis preventive procedure in 2019progressively reducing its installed capacity, which by the end of 2025 was operating at approximately 30% of its potential, well below the sector average.
In this context, trade liberalization allowed a notable increase in imported tires and a substantial drop in dollar prices, putting pressure on the profitability of national production compared to products brought from other cheaper regions, particularly from Asia. For its part, the government demands that national industries adapt to a new reality of global competition, while The Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) and unions in the sector point out that it is the manifestation of a broader phenomenon of deindustrialization.
In its statement, the UIA warned that the Fate case it is not isolatedbut part of a dynamic where entire industries face “strongly distorted” international competition and loss of qualified jobs, and demanded equal conditions and measures to defend local value chains. The impact of the closure transcended the workplace. Union sectors, led by the Single Union of Argentine Tire Workers (SUTNA)denounced that the liquidation of the plant shows the lack of an industrial development project that protects both sources of work and local production.
The closure of Fate also exposed internal tensions in the tire market and the weakness of the sector in the face of commercial openingwith figures showing an increase in tire imports and a drop in national consumption and production. Data from consulting firms and sector reports indicated that between 2023 and 2025, imports grew by almost 35%, while apparent consumption and production fell, impacting the loss of jobs and an Industrial Sector that, according to the UIA, lost tens of thousands of jobs in the last two years.
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