Jiangsu General held an overseas dealer conference in Cambodia on 22 May and celebrated the first anniversary of its Cambodian tyre production base. At the meeting, the tyre manufacturer announced that the first phase of the Cambodian project had reached production. In other words, its Cambodian factory can now produce 5 million semi-steel radial tyres and 900,000 all-steel radial tyres per year.
On 30 October, Sailun stated that it plans to invest 1.47 billion yuan (approximately £170 million; €190 million) to build a semi-steel radial tyre project in Cambodia with an annual output of 6 million units. According to the tyre manufacturer, as the competitiveness of tyre products at Cambodian factories has continued to improve in recent years, existing production capacity can no longer meet existing customer orders. It is reported that the newly added semi-steel radial tyre products will be mainly targeted at overseas markets such as North America.
Nexen plans to expand its production capacity by 40 per cent within five years. It plans to achieve this by building a new tyre factory in the United States and to expand its existing Czech factory. According to Korean media reports, Nexens’ factory in Zatec, Czech Republic, will complete the expansion project in September this year, following its 2019 official opening. Progress on the expansion project, which commenced immediately after opening, was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Nexen has invested 1.2 trillion won (approximately £732 million) in the expansion of the Czech factory. Before the expansion, the factory was able to produce 5.5 million tyres per year. After the expansion phase in 2024, the production capacity is expected to be 9.2 million tyres. By 2025, it is expected the production capacity to increase further to 11 million tyres.
In January 2022, Ceat announced it had “curbed” its ambition in the truck and bus radial segment and was looking to shift its investment focus to off-highway tyres. The company now appears to have reconsidered this step and is reactivating previously approved TBR capacity expansion plans.
Luo Yongli, deputy general manager of the company, recently told a briefing that he is optimistic about the operation of Cheng Shin in 2023. In the past, Cheng Shin has reportedly significantly reduced capital expenditures to combat adversity in the operating environment. But with the overall situation expected to improve, the tyre maker will start expanding production capacity, including launching a 40 million tyre capacity expansion plan at factories in mainland China.
The tyre manufacturing output of Iranian factories increased 26 per cent in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (1399 and specifically the period between 20 March and 21 August 2020) compared with the same period last year. Such growth is consistent with the Iranian tyre industry’s 10-year plan to double in size by 2025, which was publicised in 2015. And it also corresponds to earlier optimism related to Iranian tyre market growth, but what do the latest figures tell us about the product mix of the Iranian national tyre production base?
The Sailun Group is investing around RMB 1 billion (£110.6 million) to boost passenger car tyre capacity at its factory in Dongying, Shandong Province to 27 million tyres a year. This growth will take place as part of Sailun’s ‘HP Tire Expansion Project’ and is considered a “necessary guarantee for the group to impact the domestic mid/high-end OE market.”
When Toyo recently announced its intention to build a new tyre plant in Serbia it consolidated the country’s position as the leading location for new passenger car and light truck (PCLT) tyre manufacturing capacity in Europe. Toyo’s proposal follows Linglong’s decision to build its new European plant in the country and Cooper Tire’s plan to double the size of its facility there. Based on analysis of all announced capacity actions by Astutus Research (plant opening and expansion net of closures and downsizing), the Czech Republic is a distant second in terms of planned capacity additions between 2018 and 2026.
Sailun Group Co., Ltd. has issued a new timetable for the completion of its project to add capacity for larger rim passenger car and light commercial vehicle tyres at its Dongying factory in China. The self-funded investment to add 15 million units of capacity will now be implemented by December 2020 rather than this year, as originally planned. According to Sailun Group, the level of investment in the project and proposed usage of the funds remains the same.
Prinx Chengshan reports that “steady progress” is being made at its new tyre factory in Thailand. Construction work commenced on 31 March and the purchase of key equipment by invitation to tender has now been completed. The company estimates that all steel production workshops, mixing workshops, and supporting public works will be completed by the end of this year. Production at the site should commence in 2020.
Passenger car tyre production and capacity at Apollo Tyres’ Gyöngyöshalász plant in Hungary has steadily grown over the past two years. These respectively reached 2.1 million and almost 3 million units a year by the end of March 2019, and Apollo is still ramping up in Hungary. It’s a different story in Enschede, some 700 miles to the west, but Apollo Tyres says it isn’t preparing to end car tyre production in the Netherlands any time soon.
Capacity at the Prometeon Tyre Group plant in İzmit, Turkey will increase by 75 per cent by 2020 in order to accommodate plans to almost double exports from the facility. This project will be funded by a US$115 million investment announced by the company on Tuesday.
Pirelli Tyre Russia and Rostec have placed their signatures upon a memorandum covering plans to more than double production capacity at the Voronezh Tire Plant in southwest Russia. This agreement formalises the long-held aim of increasing capacity at the joint venture facility from 2 million to more than 4 million passenger car tyres per annum.
ZC Rubber will increase capacity at its Thailand plant, with the expansion online by the end of 2018. The company said the strategic expansion will include increased production of truck and bus, car and OTR tyres. ZC Thailand, the Thai subsidiary of ZC Rubber, opened in 2015 with a production line covering PCR, TBR, OTR and two-wheel tyres.
ZC Rubber hosted a meeting for dealers and partners in Bangkok, Thailand on 28 Januaruy. The distributor conference was headlined, “More Progress More Achievement”, focusing on improving market share in local tyre markets. Ge Guorong, vice president of ZC Rubber, shared the great achievement in the 2017 that the company’s sales revenue was up for 2017, by about 22 per cent.
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Nexen
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MohammadAli Dahaghin; Unsplash