India expansion to boost Yokohama Rubber’s off-highway tyre production

A total of US$45.5 million is being invested to expand the Yokohama Group’s global production capacity for off-highway tyres. The investment will cover the production of a new plant in India that will add a further 34,700 tonnes to Yokohama’s capacity by the end of 2019. Work on the plant will commence next month at the site in Dahej operated by ATC Tires Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of Yokohama Rubber’s July 2016-acquired off-highway company Alliance Tire Group (ATG).

An annual capacity of 91,700 tonnes in Dahej by the end of 2019 will go towards meeting what Yokohama Rubber describes as a “strong upward trend” for sales of its off-highway tyres. By investing in the Dahej site, the tyre maker hopes to avoid insufficient supply capacity in the medium term.

In addition to the Dahej plant in India’s Gujarat state, ATC Tires has a tyre plant in Tirunelveli in the state of Tamil Nadu. The Dahej facility began operations in March 2015 and now produces all three core ATG brands – Alliance, Galaxy and Primex – which are used on a wide range of off-road vehicles, including agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery.

An expansion of its commercial tyre business is a stated Yokohama Rubber core strategy. In October 2015, Yokohama Rubber started manufacturing truck and bus tyres at a new US plant in Mississippi. It acquired ATG in 2016 and Aichi Tire Industry Co., Ltd., a maker of industrial machinery tyres, in March 2017 as part of its effort to expand its commercial tyre business.