Michelin reveals new OTR plant ‘aggressive’ timetable

Michelin North America officials have shed a little additional light on the tyre-maker’s plans to build a new off the road plant and expand another in South Carolina, Tire Review reports. Both projects were unveiled officially morning during a press conference earlier in the week at MNA headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina. MNA said it would construct an all-new radial OTR tyre plant in Anderson County, SC, and expand its existing OTR plant in nearby Lexington, SC. The company estimates that the two projects would result in 500 new jobs, and will take an investment of $750 million.

The Anderson OTR tyre plant will be adjacent to Michelin’s existing rubber processing plant in Starr, SC, and will be the third Michelin plant in Anderson County. The company also operates a 2.5 million sq ft rubber processing plant in Sandy Springs.

Rich Kornacki, MNA executive vice president of specialty tyre lines, Roger Lucas, MNA earthmover tyre sales and marketing vice president; and Bruce Besancon, MNA director of earthmover tyre marketing spoke with US trade press representatives. The tyre-maker has an “aggressive timeframe” for construction of the new plant, with groundbreaking slated in the next week, and initial tyre production taking place by the end of 2013.

At the same time, the Lexington expansion, the second announced for that facility in the last year, has no set timeframe; MNA officials said they did not know when that work would be completed. The new plant will produce 49” and larger radial OTR units, primarily for mining customers, the officials said, but the exact sizes to be produced at either plant will be determined later.

MNA officials were equally cryptic when it came to discussions over how the $750 million investment would be divided between the two projects or how many of the projected 500 new jobs would come from one facility or the other; in both cases “competitive reasons” prohibited responses.

Over the past few months, Project Cougar, as the endeavour was code-named, worked its way through processes to gain state and local funding. In the end, the projects gained $9.1 million in state backing, and “fee in lieu of taxes” deals in both counties, according to MNA officials.

For Gov Haley, tyres are the new gold. In the last 12 months, more than $2.8 billion has been committed to either all-new plants (Bridgestone Americas, Continental Tire the Americas and Michelin) or plant expansions (Michelin and Bridgestone). In the process, South Carolina has become the centre of the tyre manufacturing universe, with 12 tyre plants within its borders.

In the conference call, the MNA officials said the South Carolina sites beat out other potential locations around the world. “There is unprecedented demand for Michelin earthmover tyres throughout the world,” said MNA chairman and president, Pete Selleck. “It’s a tribute to the productivity of our employees and the pro-business environment in South Carolina that the company is expanding its earthmover capacity in the state where we first began manufacturing in the US.”

Worldwide, Michelin currently produces OTR tyres in Waterville, Nova Scotia; Campo Grande, Brazil; Le Puy and Montceau-les-Mines, France; Vitoria, Spain; and Zalau, Romania. (Tire Review)

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