Yokohama’s Chinese plant market third-phase of tree-planting

The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced on 25 December 2014 that Suzhou Yokohama Tire Co., Ltd. (the manufacturers Chinese tyre plant) held a ceremony and festival on 1 November marking the third phase of tree planting at the factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. The tree planting is part of the Yokohama Rubber Group’s worldwide Yokohama Forever Forest Project.

In addition to Suzhou Yokohama president Takeo Morimoto and about 100 employees, the event was attended by chairman and president Shigetoshi Kondo of Yokohama Rubber (China) Co., Ltd, who is responsible for overseeing all group operations in China, and chairman Minoru Igarashi of Yokohama Industrial Products Sales–Shanghai Co., Ltd. The event was also attended by representatives of local environmental protection associations and featured the planting of 1,500 seedlings from five types of trees.

Suzhou Yokohama Tire, a wholly owned subsidiary of Yokohama Rubber (China), was established in April 2006 to manufacture tyres for trucks and buses. In April this year, the company also began producing passenger car tyres at a new plant constructed on a site next to the truck and bus tyre plant. The third-phase tree planting took place on the grounds of this new site. The latest planting brings the total number of trees planted at the Suzhou Yokohama Rubber site to 8,650, expanding the plant’s “forest” area to about 1,600 square meters. As result, Yokohama Rubber’s five subsidiaries in China have now planted a total of 36,140 trees.

The Yokohama Rubber Group has been carrying out the Yokohama Forever Forest Project since 2007, with a goal of planting 500,000 trees at domestic and overseas production sites by the company’s 100th anniversary in 2017. The project employs a tree-planting method developed by Dr. Akira Miyawaki, plant ecologist and professor emeritus of Yokohama National University. The “Miyawaki method” advocates planting trees that are best suited to and likely to thrive in the specific land and region. The third-phase tree planting at Suzhou Yokohama Tire brings the total number of trees planted under the Yokohama Forever Forest Project to 360,000.