News Release

Suzhou Yokohama Tire Holds Opening Ceremony for its Plant in China

2008.October.24

  • Management relation

Tokyo- The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that it held an opening ceremony to commemorate the completion of a plant for manufacturing truck/bus (TB) steel radial tires of Suzhou Yokohama Tire Co., Ltd., at the plant on October 24. Yokohama Rubber had been constructing the plant in Suzhou City, China. With the start of operation of the plant, Yokohama Rubber manufactures TB tires in four countries: Japan, the United States, Thailand and China.

The opening ceremony was attended by approximately 280 invited guests including tire distributors in many Chinese provinces and Suzhou City administrators as well as by Yokohama Rubber president and representative director Tadanobu Nagumo and managing corporate officer Seiji Takai. In his remarks, president Nagumo said, "Under the concept of a small-scale, integrated manufacturing system, we introduced Yokohama Rubber's latest technology and facilities for the construction of the new plant that has been designed with sufficient consideration about environmental protection. While we have so far relied on the import from Japan of TB tires for sale in China, our capability of supplying the tires to Chinese markets will dramatically increase as a result of the new plant's completion".

Suzhou Yokohama Tire was formed in April 2006 with an investment of 27.1 million dollars by Yokohama Rubber (China) Co., Ltd. that controls overall Chinese operations of Yokohama Rubber. With the annual manufacturing capacity of 340,000 tires, Suzhou Yokohama Tire is scheduled to begin full operation by May 2009 with the number of its employees likely to be reaching 400 by that time. Yokohama Rubber invests a total of 9.5 billion yen in the construction of the new plant and plans to continue additional investments to expand the capacity in accordance with future sales growths.

At present, Yokohama Rubber operates four manufacturing and sales companies, a tire sales company and a company controlling these companies to carry out manufacturing and sales activities in China. As Suzhou Yokohama Tire has newly started operation, Yokohama Rubber operates in China through a total of seven companies.

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TB tire plant of Suzhou Yokohama Tire (conceptual drawing)

TB tire plant of Suzhou Yokohama Tire (conceptual drawing)