Hankook improving storage capabilities at Hungary site

A 32-million-euro investment in warehousing is taking place at Hankook Tire’s factory in Rácalmás, Hungary. Hankook has already begun building warehouses for the storage of both raw materials and finished tyres and anticipates that the facility will begin operating within a year.

Under current arrangements, Hankook stores 88 per cent of the finished tyres it produces in Rácalmás within an on-site warehouse and houses the remainder, along with a significant proportion of incoming raw materials, in off-site warehouses. This will change when the new facilities enter service; Hankook says the improvements will enable it to meet current storage needs in-house without the need for outsourced services.

One of the new units will have a floorspace of around 13,000 square metres for the storage of raw materials such as chemicals, textile and steel wires, carbon black, silica and block rubber raw materials. The other building has a 20,000 square metre floorspace that will increase the Rácalmás plant’s finished tyre storage capacity to 1.5 million tyres.

A big step forward

“This investment improves our services while simplifying workflows,” says Hyung Yun Kim, managing director of Hankook Tire Hungary Ltd. “The solution of storing more raw materials for production on site will be a big step forward for the Rácalmás plant and will make the work of our employees easier. In addition, deliveries will become more practical without outsourcing the storage of finished tyres. I strongly believe in this new warehouse project, and I know that, like all the investments we have made so far, it will further add to our competitiveness and high level of efficiency.”

Hankook has already invested around 880 million euros in Hungary since it began building the Rácalmás plant. Capacity has increased 3.5 times since the facility opened in 2007 and it now produces around 900 tyre sizes and models for cars, SUVs and vans, including for OEMS such as Audi, BMW, Fiat, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, MINI, Opel, Peugeot, Porsche, Seat, Skoda and VW.