Tokyo - The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that it signed a long-term contract with Barrick Gold Corporation on January 30 to provide the world's largest gold mining company with off-the-road (OR) tires. Under the contract, Yokohama Rubber shall deliver approximately 1.300 tires a year to Barrick for 10 years from 2009 to 2018. To meet this new demand, Yokohama Rubber began building the third plant for its Onomichi Plant in Hiroshima Prefecture in October 2007. The Onomichi Plant is specialized in the manufacture of OR tires and the third plant is scheduled to start operation in January 2009. Yokohama Rubber plans to invest approximately 5 billion yen in the construction of the third plant.

Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Barrick Gold Corporation owns approximately 30 mines around the world and is aggressively expanding its mining operation so as to meet rapidly-growing demand for gold mainly for decorative and industrial usages. The mining company was therefore looking for a stable supplier of OR tires indispensable for expanding operation because there is a global shortage of OR tires as a result of booming resource development.

There are only a few world-class tire makers that can produce super-large sized OR tires. As one of such tire makers, Yokohama Rubber is hastily expanding its production capacity. In February 2006, the company came out with a plan to increase production capacity of the Onomichi Plant to 1.5 times that in 2006 by 2009. And, in October 2007, the Plant's second plant began full-fledged production of 25-inch tires, earlier than tires of other sizes to be produced in the second plant. The production hike plan has been upwardly revised due to the long-term supply contract with Barrick and other factors, and the current plan calls for an increase of 2.2 times in production capacity in FY2012 compared to that in FY2007.

The OR tires delivering to Barrick are for use with 100- to 250-ton class dump trucks that will operate mainly in open-pit mines. Yokohama Rubber will deliver the products to Barrick's gold mines around the world directly from the Onomichi Plant.