Yokohama's new U.S. plant is almost complete

March 30, 2015

Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Mississippi LLC’s (YTMM) new commercial tire plant in West Point, Miss., is set to open in October 2015.

The roughly one-million-square-foot factory is on target to begin production in October, with many of its key milestones involving construction, equipment installation and job recruitment achieved on schedule.

“We’ve come a long way since we broke ground in September 2013,” says  Alan Easome, Yokohama Corporation of North America (YCNA) senior director, new plant development.

“We outlined an aggressive plan to have a plant come on line in under 24 months, and now we are that much closer to serving our customers with expanded production capacity right here in the U.S.”

Among the milestones achieved are:

* opening of Yokohama Boulevard, a $20 million, four-mile road that will serve as a major thoroughfare in moving materials and products to and from the plant;

* substantial completion of the main production building;

* installation of equipment, with manufacturing processes, such as rubber mixing, initiated for testing purposes; and

* recruitment of 170 employees to date with nearly 300 of the 500 jobs projected expected to be filled by the end of 2015.

Yokohama says it has invested an initial $300 million in the facility in the first phase of construction. The plant will be constructed on more than 500 acres of land, which in addition to production, will include warehousing and operations facilities, and will produce up to one million tires annually.

For more information on Yokohama’s product line, visit www.yokohamatire.com.