Yokohama to build truck tire plant in Mississippi

ERJ staff report (TB)

Tokyo – Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. (YRC) has picked east central Mississippi as the site for a $300m (€230m) truck and bus tire plant it plans to build over the coming two years, reports Bruce Davis of Tire Business.

Yokohama has designated a 500-acre site near West Point, Mississippi, as the proposed site for the plant, which would be capable of producing 1m tires a year in the project’s first phase and eventually up to 4m tires “in accordance with future business growth.”

Yokohama said it is awaiting legislative approval from the state for the site, an event the tire maker expects to occur this morning at a special session of the Mississippi legislature called by Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant. The Mississippi legislature ended its 2013 legislative term several weeks ago.

Yokohama, which supplies truck and bus tires to customers in North America from a joint venture plant in Mount Vernon, Ill., and from plants in Japan and Thailand, said it considered building a plant in the U.S. “necessary” to meet increasingly growing demand for its brand and further strengthen a system aimed at “local production for local consumption.”

West Point is a town of about 11 000 inhabitants. It is the county seat of Clay County, located southeast of Memphis, northeast of Jackson, Miss., and due west of Birmingham, Alabama.