Thailand tyre plant receives Bridgestone’s largest solar facility

Solar rooftop panels installed upon Bridgestone’s Nong Khae plant in Thailand’s Saraburi province will directly power the tyre production process. The equipment installed at the Thai Bridgestone Co., Ltd., facility is the largest solar rooftop panel in use across the Bridgestone Group and has a total capacity of 9.95 MWp. According to calculations performed by the Bridgestone Asia Pacific Technology Center using a factor of 0.4798 tons-CO2/MWh, the panels should reduce CO2 emissions by 97,500 tonnes over the coming 15 years.

A ceremony to mark the panels’ operational readiness took place on 16 December 2022, led by Masahiro Higashi, joint global chief operating officer of Bridgestone Corporation and attended by a number of executives, including Yasuhiro Morita, chief operating officer of Bridgestone China and Asia Pacific. The new facility complements the solar rooftop power system installed by Bridgestone Tire Manufacturing (Thailand) Co., Ltd. in 2021.

“Guided by Bridgestone’s mission ‘Serving Society with Superior Quality’ and always focusing on global environmental issues, Bridgestone Group has been expanding and evolving our business to provide social and customer value through the global sustainability business framework to realise a carbon neutral economy,” states Yoshikazu Shida, chief executive officer of Bridgestone China and Asia Pacific. “This aims to achieve the Group’s medium-term environmental targets including a 50 per cent reduction in absolute CO2 emissions (compared with 2011) and contribute to reducing more than five times our CO2 emissions (compared with 2020) across the lifecycle through products and services both by 2030.”

The 660,000 square metre Nong Khae plant produces tyres for passenger cars and light trucks, with a total daily output of 202 tonnes.