Tokyo - The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that it would increase production capacity of its Shinshiro-Minami Plant in Aichi Prefecture. By expanding a tire plant now in operation, the company will more than treble the plant's production capacity from current 1 million to 3.1 million tires a year in FY2009. Yokohama Rubber plans to invest 10 billion yen in the plant expansion.

Yokohama Rubber constructed the Shinshiro-Minami Plant as a branch plant of Shinshiro Plant at a site of Shinshiro South Regional Industrial Park purchased from Aichi Prefecture in April 2002. Following a mixing plant's start of operation in April 2003, a plant specialized in manufacturing high-performance tires (HPT) with larger internal diameters for passenger cars and sports utility vehicles began operating in February 2004.