The third phase of the Guizhou Tyre Vietnam Factory project started on 25 November 2024. Nguyen Van Yong, chairman of the People’s Committee of Tien Giang Province, Vietnam, and Hu Zhongxiong, Secretary of the Guiyang Municipal Party Committee, attended the groundbreaking ceremony. The third phase of the Vietnam tyre manufacturing centre has a designed annual production capacity of 6 million semi-steel radial tyres.
Bridgestone Corporation is investing to expand capacity at three of its passenger car tyre production facilities in Japan. With a total investment of approximately 27 billion yen (£139.1 million) in the Hikone, Tosu and Tochigi plants, the company will boost capacity for Enliten and larger rim diameter tyres. Bridgestone will lift overall production capacity by around 3,000 tyres a day, mainly in the 20-inch and larger size category where the company anticipates growing demand. It will start work on the project early in 2025 and plans to complete it by the end of 2028.
Meghna Innova Rubber Company, the company behind Bangladeshi tyre brand MTF Tyre, has expanded its activities into the truck and bus tyre and agricultural tyre segments. Local newspaper The Business Standard writes that the Meghna Group subsidiary has invested BDT13 billion (£85.3 million) into the project, with 80 per cent of the investment going towards new tyre building machinery.
GSF Car Parts is reporting 20 per cent year-on-year revenue growth, outperforming a buoyant aftermarket sector. Indeed, data from Factor Sales suggests strong growth across the wider aftermarket car parts segment, with the sector up 6.5 per cent year-on-year growth for September, continuing a pattern that has seen eight out of nine months in 2024 trading ahead of 2023. One explanation is that the growth of the car parts market indicates that consumers are holding on to their existing cars for longer, driving demand for repairs and replacement parts.
Car parts distributor GSF Car Parts has announced the opening of two new branches in Ruislip and Stockton. These new branches bring the total number of GSF locations closer to 200, following a series of openings over the past few months.
Linglong is investing $645 million (about £506 million; 591 million) in order to expand the company’s Serbian tyre capacity, build a photovoltaic power station and even add a retreading and recycling wing. According to our Chinese-language sister site, the expansion project is scheduled to start in January 2025 and be completed and put into use at the end of December 2030.
Bush Tyres (B.A. Bush & Son Limited) has signed a 10-year lease on an industrial unit in Wakefield, as the firm gears up for further expansion across the North of England. The news comes just three months after Bush Tyres opened its first branch in the city.
Jiangsu General said the Thailand plant’s construction project (Phase II) has been modified. Specifically, the tyre manufacturer has increased the production capacity of semi-steel radial tyres at overseas bases and cancelled the plan to expand the production capacity of full-steel radial tyres.
Kirkby Tyres, purportedly the largest importer and distributor of off-highway tyres in the UK and Ireland, reports that it is expanding following the acquisition of a new ten-acre site. The new site is situated alongside the company’s current headquarters in Liverpool, UK and features a 200,000 square foot warehouse, according to the company.
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.
Tyrepress China learned during the 2024 Guangrao Tyre Show that local tyre manufacturer Fangxing Rubber is implementing a production expansion plan. Specifically, Fangxing Rubber’s current production capacity is 3 million truck and bus radials (TBR) and 3 million passenger car radials (PCR). After the expansion plans are enacted, the company will have increased its production capacity for TBR and PCR to 5 million and 6 million, respectively.
GSF Car Parts plans to open a new National Distribution Centre (NDC) in Wolverhampton, UK. According to the aftermarket distributor, this facility marks a milestone for GSF in its commitment ‘to rapidly awaken the sleeping giant of the UK aftermarket’. GSF Car Parts, the UK’s fastest-growing car parts distributor, is set to open the nearly 500,000 square foot National Distribution Centre (NDC) to “improve supply chain infrastructure and enhance service throughout their network”.
To meet the evolving requirements of workshops in the UK, Delphi is investing half a million pounds in a “significant expansion” of the Delphi Academy. The Warwick-based centre will double in size, bringing total floorspace to 1,430 square metres.
The first tyre has rolled off the production line at the expansion project of Double Coin’s factory in Anhui, China. According to the tyre manufacturer, the tyres that rolled off the production line this time are products suitable for new energy vehicles in size 205/60 R16 92V. After the project reaches total production, the annual production capacity of the Double Coin Anhui factory will exceed 10 million units.
Roughly two years ago, Tyres & Accessories visited Alba Tyre Management Ltd for the first time and found a professional retreading operation taking on an increasingly influential position in the Scottish retreading business by following a premium retread strategy. 24 months later, the company has grown by something like 30 per cent. We spoke to director David Wilson as well as company found Alex Wilson in order to find out how Alba has grown at such an impressive rate.
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