Continental Tyres Ireland has renewed its partnership as support vehicle tyre partner for Blood Bikes Leinster, the east coast chapter of the nationwide Association of Blood Bikes. The registered charity celebrated the renewal of the partnership for 2024 with the fitting of a new set of UltraContact NXT tyres for one of their support vehicles, a specially liveried Mitsubishi Lancer at Heffernan Tyres in Kildare town.
Blood Bikes is a registered not-for-profit Irish charity, established by local volunteers, who look after the timely delivery of blood and associated blood products, human donor breast milk, cancer medication treatments and other time-sensitive material to hospitals and medical centres across the country.
Depending totally on public donations and corporate sponsorship, the service is run free of charge for the medical bodies, thanks to the legion of volunteers who give their time freely for this life-saving service. The Blood Bikes teams carry out this valuable service to hospitals ensuring that ambulances or Garda vehicles are not taken out of service and are kept where they are needed the most.
Fergus Lennon, Regional Coordinator of Blood Bikes Leinster, said: “We are very appreciative of the partnership with the Continental Tyres Ireland team. When you spend the amount of time on the road that our volunteers do, you come to appreciate the value of premium tyres both for providing high levels of safety for our drivers and for the longevity of the tyres themselves. And given the strong emphasis on sustainability from these latest NXT tyres from Continental, that really fits with our values as an organisation. They will keep our volunteers safe as they clock up the kilometres.”
Tom Dennigan of Continental Tyres Ireland said: “We are only too happy to renew our support to Fergus and his team of volunteers as they provide their life-saving service to the people of Ireland. The Blood Bike volunteers do some really incredible work, Fergus told me that he was recently in the UK to collect a heart that could not be transported by aircraft – it had to be transported by car and ferry. All of their cargo is important, but can you imagine driving that journey with such a precious life-giving organ in your care. That is why Fergus and his team need the best tyres they can get and we are proud to be their tyre partner.”
Billed as Continental’s most sustainable tyre to date, the UltraContact NXT combines a high percentage of renewable, recycled and mass balance certified materials while at the same time providing maximum safety and performance. The NXT tyre contains up to 32% renewable raw materials. These include resins from paper and wood industry waste and silica from rice husk ash.
About 5% of the UltraContact NXT is made from recycled materials. These include recycled rubber from mechanically processed waste tyres and recycled steel. The tyre’s carcass is made of polyester fibres that Continental obtains through its ContiRe.Tex technology from recycled PET bottles, which otherwise often end up in incinerators or landfills.
All sizes of the UltraContact NXT achieve the EU tyre label’s highest rating (“A”) for rolling resistance, wet braking and exterior noise. Last month, the jury of the German Design Council awarded the UltraContact NXT with the 2024 German Innovation Award in the category “Excellence in Business to Consumer: Transportation”.
As support vehicle tyre partner to the service, Continental is supplying its award-winning tyres for use on the Blood Bikes support vehicles, including a 4×4 model, that enables the service to continue operating during even the most arduous of weather conditions.
