Who Owns Vredestein?

Emile Louis Constant Schiff founded the company in Delft, Netherlands, in 1909, initially producing rubber products before moving into tires. The Vredestein name became one of Europe's oldest tire brands, building early strength in agricultural tires and expanding into passenger car and bicycle tires through the twentieth century.

The company passed through several owners in the postwar era. It was part of the Dutch rubber conglomerate that became Vredestein Icopro, and by the 1990s it was majority-owned by the state before privatization and a period of financial distress in the early 2000s. A 1997 design partnership with Italian studio Giugiaro gave the brand its signature focus on styled tread and sidewall design, a differentiator it retains today.

Apollo Tyres acquired Vredestein in 2009 and renamed it Apollo Vredestein B.V. Under Apollo, the company invested in the Enschede plant and opened a global R&D center there in 2013. Apollo relocated the European head office to Amsterdam in 2015.

Restructuring followed as European tire manufacturing came under cost pressure. In 2020, Apollo announced 750 job cuts at Enschede and the planned end of regular passenger car tire production there. The pressure continued: in April 2025 Apollo announced the plant would close, and tire production at Enschede ended definitively on June 30, 2026, eliminating about 500 jobs. Production moved to Apollo's plants in Gyöngyöshalász, Hungary, and India, while the Enschede R&D center remains.

In a further 2026 development, Apollo Tyres decided to exit the Vredestein bicycle tire business in Europe and entered advanced talks with external parties to continue the bicycle tire line under new ownership, aiming to secure a sustainable future for that part of the brand.