Kumho to rebuild image, roll out six new tires next year

Vieques, Puerto Rico—Kumho Tire USA Inc. is hoping to have a new start in 2015, putting behind its several years of uncertainty and product availability issues. The company has announced that it plans to achieve its targets through the launch of six key products, enhanced global production capacities and an energized marketing strategy built around its sponsorship of the National Basketball Association.

“We are building our house,” Harry Choi, Kumho Tire USA chairman, told a select group of customers gathered at the company’s 2014-15 dealer meeting in Vieques. “That’s ambitious and it will require our best efforts and your support.”

Acknowledging that Kumho’s product portfolio was growing old, Choi told the dealers Kumho plans next year to roll out six passenger, SUV and light truck tires to replace products that have been on the market for up to seven years in some cases.

After that, the company intends to refresh a portion of its product portfolio every year, he stressed, noting that Kumho’s recent research and development cooperation pact with Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. is providing key R&D input.

Choi said Kumho was planning to sell 10 million passenger/light truck tire units in North America by 2018, which he said should equate to a 3.5-percent market share. This would put Kumho back at the market position it achieved in 2007 before financial problems at its parent company and the elevated US tariffs of 2009-12 put a crimp in the firm’s ability to provide product and grow.

Integral to Kumho’s strategy to rebuild its market position and restore dealers’ faith in its ability to overcome past fill-rate issues will be the firm’s plant under construction in Macon, Georgia. Due on stream by 2016, that plant eventually will be producing up to 4 million units annually.

At the same time, Kumho’s decision in 2009-10 to move the majority of production destined for the US back to South Korea from China will put the company in a strong competitive position now that elevated countervailing duties are again being levied on Chinese imports.