Yokohama Philippines capacity to increase 143% by 2017

Capacity at Yokohama’s production site in the Philippines is to increase from seven million to ten million passenger car tyres per annum as a result of expansion work being carried out there in the next three years. This first phase expansion at the Yokohama Tire Philippines site involves the construction of a new tyre plant to complement the existing 165,000 square metre facility. Construction work will get underway after a tenancy agreement is signed in February and initial production is expected to commence in 2013, with full operational capacity reached the following year. A total of 20 billion yen (₤153.2 million) is being invested in the first-phase expansion; a further 30 billion yen is earmarked for the second-phase expansion work, which will further increase Yokohama Tire Philippines’ annual capacity to 17 million tyres by 2017.

Boosting production capacity in the Philippines contributes to the implementation of business plans set out in the third phase of Yokohama Rubber’s ‘Grand Design 100’ medium-term management plan, which takes effect in 2012. Most of the additional capacity will be directed to North American markets. The new tenancy contract for the plant involves an additional 300,000 square metres, increasing the site’s total area by 188 per cent – a necessary growth, as Yokohama Rubber notes it would have “difficulty increasing production within the current plant area” due to previous expansion work carried out at the site.

The existing Yokohama Tire Philippines facility in the Clark Freeport Zone was established in 1996 and currently employs 1,900 workers in the production of passenger car and 4×4 tyres in 13 to 18-inch rim diameters, mainly for export to Europe, North America and ASEAN countries. A portion of production is also delivered to OEM customers in North America and Asia.

These newly announced expansion plans add to those already underway at Yokohama Rubber’s Shinshiro-Minami Plant in Japan, Hangzhou Yokohama Tire Co., Ltd., in China, Yokohama Rubber Manufacturing (Thailand) Co., Ltd., and Yokohama Tire Corporation in the United States. In addition, the company is erecting a new tyre factory in Russia that is scheduled to enter production in the fiscal year ending March 2012. These expansion programmes are expected to give the Yokohama Rubber group a global production capacity of 60 million tyres per annum by the end of the same fiscal year.