Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. will build a passenger tire facility at the Shinshiro Minami Plant, which is a branch of the Shinshiro Plant in Aichi Prefecture in Japan.
The company is concluding a purchase of property next to the Shinshiro Minami Plant to prepare for the expansion.
The facility will manufacture high performance tires larger than 18 inches for passenger cars and SUVs. To enable small-lot production of diverse models at low cost, says the company, the facility "will harness advanced, space-saving techniques based on the New Manufacturing System and Tomorrow Concept Tire."
The initial production capacity will be 300,000 units annually, rising eventually to 750,000 units per year.
Construction is slated to start this spring, ending in 2005. The total cost of the new facility should be about five billion yen. The facility also will feature a mill that integrates everything from mixing, forming and building, to vulcanizing.
Yokohama Rubber is "reinforcing its high performance passenger car tire business in keeping with its Grand Design (GD*10), a long-term initiative announced in November last year. The new construction and land purchase form part of that plan," says the company. "Management may eventually build another passenger car tire facility at the Shinshiro Minami Plant."
