Business Booming at Fort Dunlop

Dunlop says that business is booming at its Fort Dunlop motorsport factory. Currently the plant is turning out 200,000 bespoke racing car and motorcycle tyres per annum, and victories achieved on the factory’s tyres, including last year’s Le Man and Isle of Man TT, mean that the 300 staff at Fort Dunlop are being kept very busy indeed.

“The factory is absolutely full to capacity,” said Dunlop communications manager James Bailey in an interview broadcast on BBC Midlands Today. “We’ve won new business, with new championships around the world signed up, many new teams in both motorcycle racing and in car racing. And it’s a rare good news story, you could say, for the automotive industry.”

The Fort Dunlop site has been a centre of manufacturing since 1917, added Bailey, however motorsport tyres have not always been the factory’s exclusive focus: According to the communications manager the array of products turned out by Fort Dunlop plant includes “not just tyres – even during the Second World War we were making inflatable tanks as decoy tanks to confuse the Germans and ensure that they were bombing inflatable tanks rather than the real ones.”