In 1898 Oscar Englebert, who till then had worked with rubberised coatings and mats, set up a tyre factory in Belgium, manufacturing pneumatic tyres for bicycles and automobiles, and by 1912 the business employed 400 people.
After the war, in 1958, the company entered into a partnership agreement with Uniroyal,[REF] then one of the world's top three tyre manufacturers.