Global Tire: Project pipeline keeps flowing

Amid persistent issues around microchip shortages, Covid lockdowns in China and Russia’s war on Ukraine, tire makers, this year, continued to advance programmes to bring new capacity on stream and upgrade production in-line with changing market demands. Here, we collate the major tire manufacturing projects announced since the beginning of the year:

November

Nokian Tyres unveiled plans to invest Ä650m in a greenfield passenger car tire factory in north west Romania as part of its strategy to exit Russia and bolster its market presence, particularly in central Europe. The facility – to be ‘the first zero CO2 emission tire factory’ – will be located in Oradea, near the Hungarian border. Construction is to begin in early 2023 with first tires to be produced in H2, 2024. The plant will have an annual capacity of 6m units and future “expansion potential.”

October

Pirelli announced its third investment project at its Silao, Mexico plant in just two years, this time to raise manufacturing capacity for ‘high-value’ tires. The Ä114m investment, over two years, will increase production at the site by 1m units to 8.5m units and add 400 new jobs, expanding the site workforce to 3,200 people.

Tatneft expanded the scope of its KamaTyresKZ tire project in Kazakhstan. Under a second project-stage it will manufacture rubber products such as conveyor belts and then tires for agricultural machinery under a third phase. The project in Saran – a JV between Russia’s Tatneft and Kazakhstan’s AllurTyres – will make 3m light vehicle tires and 500k truck tires a year. The plant will ramp up to full capacity by 2024.

September

Bridgestone Brazil announced a new round of expansions at its passenger car tire plant in Camaçari, Brazil. The new BRL270m (Ä52m) investment will help modernise and expand the factory, bolstering a BRL700m expansion announced in mid-2021 to raise capacity by over 20% to 4.3m tires a year. Bridgestone said the new project is part of a strategy to meet growing demand for high-performance tires for cars, including EVs, SUVs and pick-ups.

August

Shandong Linglong Tire Co. (Linglong) progressed its Serbian greenfield tire manufacturing project with the production of first tires at its Zrenjanin facility. The Chinese tire maker first announced plans to build the Ä863m production plant in northern Serbia in 2018. The facility is slated to produce 13.62m radial tires per year: 12m passenger car tires, 1.6m truck and bus tires as well as 20k off-road tires.

Linglong also reported that it had “steadily advanced” several other projects, including ramping up its fifth Chinese production facility in Changchun, Jilin, the first phase of which was inaugurated in December last year. The unit was originally to have a total annual capacity for 1.2m passenger car tires and 200k truck and bus tires by 2025. Linglong has now applied for an expansion permit at the site to produce 140k off-highway tires.

Hankook announced plans to ramp up capacity at its tire plant in Clarksville, Tennessee. The Ä1.6bn project includes a previously planned phase 2 expansion to up capacity for light vehicle tires by 100% and adds a third phase to build Hankook’s first US truck bus and radials (TBR) plant. To start-up in Q4, 2024, the project will reach full capacity by early 2026, doubling car tire capacity to 11m units/yr, and adding 1m/yr TBR production.

Bridgestone Americas announced a $550m expansion of its flagship tire & bus radial (TBR) tire plant in Warren County, to meet growing demand and accelerate data-driven solutions for fleet operators. Set for completion by May 2024, the investment is expected to increase capacity of the 9,100 units/day plant by 32% and upgrade technology to allow all tires to be equipped with RFID tags.

Jiangsu General Science Technology (JGST) said its Ä166m tire factory in Sihanoukville special economic zone, in western Cambodia, would come on-line by the yearend with a designed capacity to produce 6m passenger car tires a year. JGST said it would also fully ramp up production at its Ä260m Thai factory, which has the annual capacity to produce 1 million truck and bus tires and 6 million passenger car tires.

Yokohama Rubber Co. (YRC) started up its third Indian off-road tire manufacturing plant in Visakhapatnam, on the Bay of Bengal about four months ahead of schedule. The Ä146m facility is to support a 1.6-fold expansion at YRC’s Dahej plant, in the state of Gujarat. Visakhapatnam will initially have a daily capacity of 69 tonnes, increasing to 132 tonnes/day in the second phase to start up in Q1, 2024 – raising YRC’s overall OTR tire capacity to 548 tonnes/day.

July

Wanli Tire Co. unveiled plans to raise the capacity of its semi-steel radial tire plant in Guangzhou City by 60%: submitting an environmental impact report for the planned Yuan577-million (Ä85 million) “upgrade and technical transformation project.” The project will involve upgrading all production lines and removing outdated equipment to increase production capacity from 15m to 24 million units a year.

Global Rubber Industries (GRI) has completed the second phase of a Ä98m capacity expansion next to its established plant in Sri Lanka. The project lifted capacity by nearly 100%, to 60 tonnes/day. Under phase II, GRI added eight new tire building machines and 17 tire curing presses as well as advanced manufacturing technology and R&D capabilities. Under phase 3, now under way, GRI aims to increase capacity to 750k tires a year, or 100 tonnes/day.

June

Chinese tire maker Sailun Group announced a Yuan15.1bn (Ä2.1bn) project to build a major tire plant in Dongjiakou, some 40km south of Qingdao city. Construction will involve five phases, each taking 12 months. Once fully on-stream, the plant is to manufacture of 20m sets of semi-steel radial tires, 10m sets of all-steel radial tire and 150,000 tonnes of off-road tires. Construction was set to start this November, with the entire project to be completed by late 2027.

May

Goodyear officially opened its new manufacturing facility in Dudelange, Luxembourg, where it will advance small-batch tire manufacturing with reduced lead times. The Ä73m facility features an industry 4.0 digital manufacturing process, making large-rim UHP and UUHP tires at rates “four times faster than a standard production cycle.”

April

Zhongce Rubber (ZC Rubber) relocated its tire plant in Yangxi, Jinade City to a town in the same region in-line with a municipal replanning request. The Yangxi facility, which had annual capacity to produce 1.8m bias tires and 1m all-steel tires, was moved to a brownfield plant in Chunqiu Village, Xiaya Town, Jiande City. The relocated plant has capacity to produce 10.5m truck & bus radials a year.

March

ZC Rubber announced the planned acquisition of off-the-road (OTR) tire maker Tianjin United Tire & Rubber Int. Co (TUTRIC), based in the north east China port city of Tianjin. With the $200m deal, ZC Rubber plans to invest over $100m in the acquired facilities over the next five years – boosting the Tianjin tire maker’s annual sales seven-fold to $700m and making it “the second-largest OTR factory” in Asia.

Off-highway tire maker Balkrishna Tyres Ltd (BKT) rolled out the first radial agricultural tire at its new expanded Bhuj site in eastern India. The company broke ground on the Ä95m expansion in May 2021. The new 12-acre facility is slated to add 50kt of capacity at the flagship BKT site, which manufactures around 160kt a year of agricultural, earthmover and industrial tires.

January

Trelleborg Wheel Systems (TWS) started trial production at its JV two-wheeler tire plant in Bharuch, western Indian state of Gujarat. Syam Trelleborg Tires LLP, 24% owned by Trelleborg and 76% by Yogesh Agencies & Investments, had originally aimed to start production by year-end 2020. No further details on the capacity or financial size of the investment were given.

Linglong rolled out first all-steel radial tires from its fifth China tire production plant in Changchun, Jilin. In the first phase, the Ä628m facility is to produce 1.2m truck and bus tires. To come fully on stream in 2025, the project has three phases and will produce 12m passenger car tires, 2m truck and bus tires and 200k retread truck and bus tires annually.