Continental opens upgraded truck tire hall in Czech Republic

Otrokovice, Czech Republic – Continental has inaugurated a newly reconstructed truck tire production hall in its manufacturing facility in Otrokovice, the German tire-maker announced 12 Oct.

The reconstruction project, at €165 million, was the biggest investment by Continental in Otrokovice tire plant in the last three years, creating 130 new jobs.

“Today we are celebrating the finalisation of a three-year project, a strategic step focusing on long-term market growth of Continental’s commercial vehicle tires business unit,” said Andreas Esser, head of commercial vehicle tires.

According to Esser, Otrokovice is the largest tire-plant worldwide. With this investment, he added, the plant has developed into “a production hub for America as well as for the emerging emerging markets in Asia Pacific.”

The reconstruction and expansion of the CVT2 production hall started at the end of 2013 and was completed last year. It was gradually equipped and trial operations have already begun.

The first unit in the CVT2 hall was cured in 2014, but the first serially produced tire was manufactured in April 2015.

At this time, production had started with one tire-building machine and six vulcanising presses.

By the end of 2015, said Conti, additional tire-building machines and presses allowed production to grow.

“Now, all machines have been installed and are operating. The tire-building and curing departments run non-stop across four shifts,” said the Conti announcement on 12 Oct.

With the completion of the expansion, production capacity of truck tires will grow to nearly 1.6 million tires per year.

In 2015, Continental Barum produced 21.1 million units of passenger tires, 919,000 units of truck tires and 119,000 units of industrial tires. This year, truck tire production will surpass one million units, according to Conti.

Production at the plant has increased three-fold since 2005, driven by a project supporting the manufacture of 22.5” tires and mostly by production in the new hall.