Toyo announces plans for new Malaysian tyre plant

Toyo Tires has announced its plans to build a new tyre plant in Perak, Malaysia. The Japanese manufacturer’s board of directors decided to construct a new facility in order to strengthen Toyo’s production-supply capability for passenger car and light truck tyres mainly in the Asia region. Toyo aims to make sales worth 310 billion yen and operating income at 24 billion yen this year from tyres. The company says it has established a “three-point global production supply structure based on Asia, Japan and North America, in order to achieve a world-wide supply of 45 million tyres in 2015, representing an increase of 55 per cent from 2010 levels.

The suburb of Perak, Malaysia, which is the planned construction site for the new factory, already has the Silverstone Berhad facility. That manufacturer was bought by Toyo earlier in the year. Toyo says it envisages “an efficient and effective operation”, by pursuing “the synergistic effects of the dual plants”.

Toyo says it will make an initial investment of approximately 20 billion yen, and production will start at about 2.5 million PCR and light truck tyres annually. These tyres will be shipped domestically, in addition to Malaysia’s neighbouring countries and other regions. After this, production will be increased to 5 million tires by 2015, with ultimate goals to achieve 10 million tyres in the future.

Toyo established a subsidiary in Ipoh, Malaysia in April 2011 to prepare for the start-up of this new factory. The new subsidiary company is known as Toyo Tyre Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, with Kazuyuki Ito, corporate officer of Toyo Tire & Rubber Co. heading up the operation. The site will be 480,000sqm in size, and aims to employ around 800 when completed in 2015.