Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd.'s new passenger car tire production facility, being built on land adjacent to Suzhou Yokohama Tire Co. Ltd.'s existing truck and bus tire plant in Jiangsu Province, China, will be ready to produce tires in April 2014.
Construction of the new facility began last summer. When all phases of the project are completed by the end of 2017, the plant will have an annual production capacity of 6 million tires. The total investment is expected to reach about 26.5 billion yen ($254.5 million in today's dollars).
The facility will primarily manufacture Yokohama's eco tire brand, "BluEarth," and other high performance, fuel-efficient passenger car tires "for which demand has been increasing in recent years," says the company. The products will be sold in China.
The plant's high performance tires will be targeted at original equipment sales to automobile makers in China as well as the Chinese aftermarket.
Suzhou Yokohama Tire Co. was established in 2006 as a manufacturing and sales subsidiary for Yokohama. Its truck and bus tire plant has an annual production capacity of 340,000 tires.
