New tire plants represent 20M units of annual capacity

The Bridgestone Advanced Tire Production Center in Akron, Ohio, is located a few blocks west of the Bridgestone Americas Tech Center, A test track is being built further west of the race tire plant.

Tire makers large and small brought new capacity on stream in the past year in the form of eight greenfield factories and numerous expansions.

Collectively, the new plants represent new annual prroduction capacity of 16 million passenger/light truck tires, 3.5 million medium truck tires and over 17,000 metric tons of off-highway tires.

The new plants commissioned in the past year represent over $3 billion in investment.

The new factories (listed alphabetically) are:

Bridgestone Americas The Advanced Tire Production Center (ATPC) in Akron, Ohio, which supports the company's motorsports activities, is the first new tire production facility to open in the Akron area since the 1950s.

It will employ 60 tire builders and professionals. The plant is focused on producing Firestone Firehawk race tires for the NTT IndyCar Series. Bridgestone is the exclusive tire supplier for the series through 2025.

Bridgestone invested $21 million in the ATPC.

Goodyear Goodyear's newest factory is the passenger tire plant in Dudelange, Luxembourg, where the company is employing a proprietary, small-batch manufacturing process that it claims can turn out tires four times faster than conventional production methods.

Goodyear broke ground on the factory in September 2017, saying at that time the $77 million investment would advance its "connected business model, which aligns all of our assets — from the production floor to consumers who choose Goodyear online and at retail."

Developed internally by Goodyear engineers, the 4.0 digital manufacturing process — dubbed "Mercury" — anticipates and responds to increasing complexity in the tire industry, the company said, and represents an effort to develop and produce premium ultra-high-performance tires efficiently in small-batch quantities on demand for both replacement and original equipment customers.

Linglong Group Shandong Linglong Tire Co. Ltd. initiated production of passenger tires at greenfield tire plant in Serbia and production of truck/bus tires at a plant in Changchun, China.

The company also disclosed plans to expand capacity for off-highway tires at a plant in China, the company stated in a financial report submitted to the Shanghai Stock Exchange recently.

The Serbian plant, in Zrenjanin, is slated to produce 13.6 million radial tires per year: 12 million passenger tires, 1.6 million truck/bus tires and 20,000 off-the-road tires at full capacity.

The Chinese tire maker disclosed plans in 2018 to build the $994 million plant in Zrenjanin, in northern Serbia.

The start of production in early 2022 at the $700 million plant in Changchun, China, came 18 months after Linglong announced plans for the factory. The factory has a rated capcity of 1.2 million truck/bus tires annually in Phase One, but plans also call for capacities eventually of up to 6 million passenger tires and a few hundred thousand truck/bus retreads annually.

Furthermore, Linglong said the second-phase project of its Hubei Jingmen factory reached production, and the third-phase project is under way.

Once fully operational, the Jingmen plant will have annual capacity of 12 million car tires, 2.4 million truck/bus tires and 60,000 off-road tires.

Sailun Group Co. Ltd. Sailun started trial production last November at a $345 million passenger tire plant it built in Qilu Special Economic Zone in Svay Rieng, Cambodia.

When initially announced, the factory's capacity was given as 5 million passenger tires a year, but Sailun later doubled its investment in the project and raised the designed annual capacity to 9 million units.

The plant, located about half-way between Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is Sailun's second plant overseas, in addition to one in Vietnam.

Service Industries Ltd.

Joint venture partners Service Industries Ltd. of Pakistan and China's Chaoyang Long March Tyre Co. Ltd. began limited production of radial truck and bus tires in March at their factory on the outskirts of Hyderabad in Pakistan's Sindh province.

The $250 million plant is the country's first dedicated radial truck and bus tire factory, according to LongMarch officials.

Service Industries, through its Servis Tyres business unit, owns 51% of the venture, which opens with a Phase I annual capacity of 750,0000 truck tires a year initially. A Phase II expansion would double that capacity.

Toyo Tire Corp. Toyo's factory in Serbia started limited production this summer, with output initially focused "preferentially" on supplying the U.S. market, where Toyo is experiencing "robust" demand.

Originally scheduled to start operations in April, the full-scale launch of the $450 million project was delayed somewhat due to "COVID-related influences," the Japanese tire maker said earlier.

The plant, Toyo's first in Europe and eighth worldwide, opens with nameplate capacity of 5 million passenger and light commercial vehicle tires a year. Toyo expects to ramp up to that level of production by September 2023, with 60% of production (3 million units) earmarked for Europe and the rest for North America.

Toyo broke ground on the plant in Indjija City — a municipality of about 47,000 residents northwest of Belgrade in the autonomous province of Vojvodina — in December 2020.

Trelleborg Wheel Systems Trelleborg and a business partner in India built a two-wheeler tire plant in Bharuch, in India's Gujarat state, that is making Mitas-brand motorcycle and scooter tires.

The new venture — Syam Trelleborg Tires L.L.P. — is 24% owned by Trelleborg and 76% by Yogesh Agencies & Investments Pvt. Ltd.

Bharuch is a city of about 150,000 residents at the mouth of the river Narmada in Gujarat in western India.

Trial production started in December ahead of the planned launch of commercial production in the first part of 2022, a company spokesperson said.

At the time the venture's founding was announced, Paolo Pompei, president of Trelleborg Wheel Systems, said the investment enables Trelleborg to "take our motorcycle tire operations to a new level," strengthening the product offering and extending the brand globally.

It's not known how the venture's ownership might change considering Trelleborg Wheel is being acquired by Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd.

Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd.

Yokohama commissioned production in August 2022 at its Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, off-highway tire plant nearly nine months ahead of schedule as YRC works to meet growing demand.

In its initial production stage, the plant — Yokohama's third off-highway tire factory in India — will be producing at a daily rate of 69 metric tons (rubber weight), Yokohama said. The capacity is scheduled to nearly double to 132 tons daily by the first quarter of 2024 with further expansion under consideration.

The 4.2-million-sq.-ft., $165 million plant was scheduled to begin production in the first quarter of 2023. The earlier-than-planned startup will enable Yokohama to respond more quickly to expanding global demand for off-highway tires.

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