$174 million investment: Nokian Tyres boosting USA production, warehousing

Nokian Tyres is investing approximately US$174 million (£143.3 million; €161.9 million) to double tyre capacity at its factory in the USA and to expand warehousing capabilities at the Dayton, Tennessee site. The company anticipates that this project will lead to the creation of 75 new jobs at the Dayton facility in 2023. The expansion will also enable Nokian Tyres to add light truck tyres to the plant’s product mix in 2023.

The project officially began yesterday with an event attended by local, state and company officials. “As demand for our tyres grows in the United States and Canada, our expanded Dayton Factory will supply customers with a rising number of safe, sustainable all-season and all-weather products,” announced Tommi Heinonen, vice-president of sales at Nokian Tyres. “We are happy to see the factory provide more jobs for North American workers and more tyres for North American drivers.”

The Dayton workforce will grow to 475 employees. Nokian Tyres comments that the expansion and warehouse are in line with its originally announced investment, which called for the facility to reach full capacity of as many as four million tyres – an output potential Nokian aims to reach in 2024. The warehouse to be built at the Dayton site will be the company’s tenth in the USA and Canada. Nokian intends to start operations at the 600,000-tyre capacity facility, which will serve the growing volume of customers in the “sun belt” region of the southern USA, by mid-2024.

Valued partner to Tennessee

Speaking at the project start event on 11 January, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee thanked Nokian Tyres for “placing its confidence in Tennessee,” adding that the 75 new jobs “will greatly benefit Tennesseans in Rhea County and across the region for years to come.”

Stuart McWhorter, Tennessee commissioner of economic and community development, added that Nokian Tyres has been a “valued partner” to the State of Tennessee since 2019. “We believe Dayton and Rhea County will continue to be the ideal location for this company’s growth and future success.”

“We strive to be an employer of choice in Southeast Tennessee, and that has been our focus since day one of our operations,” said David Korda, Dayton factory operations director. “As we grow, we’re excited about providing fulfilling opportunities for professional growth that will also help our factory and company grow.”

All-season tyres at growth epicentre

The Dayton factory set production records with existing equipment in 2022. The plant makes all-season and all-weather tyres, products that are the “epicentre” of Nokian Tyres’ growth plan in North America.

Nokian Tyres opened its North American production facility in 2019 and began producing tyres there for commercial use in January 2020. The company currently employs approximately 350 workers in Dayton, a number it will grow to 475 by the end of 2023.

The 830,000 square-foot (77,100 square metre) facility includes a LEED v4 Gold-certified administration building, the only LEED v4 Silver-certified tyre production building in the world, and a five-story mixing building where the company formulates rubber compounds for the tyres produced in Dayton.

The Dayton Factory is part of a global production network that also includes Nokian Tyres’ flagship facility in Nokia, Finland but no longer counts the facility in Vsevolozhsk, Russia, which Nokian is selling to local oil and gas company Tatneft. In November 2022, Nokian Tyres announced it would build a new tyre production factory in Oradea, Romania, and estimates that this plant will start commercial production in 2025.