Yokohama increasing capacity for larger car & SUV tyres in Japan

Over the next two years, production capacity for 18-inch and larger high-performance tyres will increase by about 20 per cent at Yokohama rubber’s Shinshiro plant in Japan in order to meet growing demand for these highly profitable products. Work on a new plant production line will begin this May. This will go on stream in June 2017 and reach full capacity by the following April. Yokohama Rubber is investing approximately 3.7 billion yen (£22.7 million) in this project.

The Shinshiro plant, located in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, has the largest passenger car tyre production capacity of any Yokohama group facility. The factory and the nearby Shinshiro-Minami plant can produce a combined total of 16.9 million tyres a year (as of December 2015).

According to Yokohama Rubber’s 2015 Annual Report, the company’s global production capacity (consumer and commercial) stood at 68 million tyres at the end of 2014; projected global capacity is expected to rise to 74 million units by the end of 2017.