Goodyear Closing Taiwan Factory

Goodyear has announced plans to close its Taoyuan factory near Taipei, Taiwan. The passenger car tyre plant will cease operations on July 31, 2010, a decision the tyre maker says it made in line with its global strategy of transferring production to lower-cost countries. Despite the ending of production, Goodyear states its commitment to Taiwan “remains unchanged”.

The Taoyuan plant employs 236 workers and exports a large quantity of its output to European markets. As recently as 2007 Goodyear announced plans to invest NT$300 million to modernise the facility in order to equip it for the production of low-profile premium tyres in 16-inch and larger sizes. At the time, Goodyear Asia Pacific president Pierre Cohade said: “This new investment underscores our confidence in Taiwan’s manufacturing capabilities, with its unprecedented competence in innovation, high-quality and flexible workforce, as well as its supply chain management. For Goodyear, we will continue to work with our partners to provide best-of-breed products and services to meet the needs of our customers in the Taiwan and global markets.

“Our workforce in Taiwan is among the best in Asia Pacific, not only because of their outstanding work efficiency which is 10 per cent to 20 per cent higher than that of other markets,” Cohade added. “Employees in our Taiwan facility strive to uphold Goodyear`s safety performance to world-class levels through ongoing trainings, internal communication, benchmarking, evaluation and process improvement, setting an outstanding role model for our employees in other parts of the world.”