A groundbreaking ceremony has been held for the new Prinx Chengshan Thailand factory in the WHA Eastern Seaboard Industrial Estate EISE 3 in Chonburi. The new plant is amongst the first to be set up in the industrial park, and Prinx Chengshan notes that a launching ceremony for the park was held today.
German tyre and wheel wholesaler Reifen Gundlach is investing more than 20 million euros in an additional production line for its tyre-and-wheel assembly business. Work on the project is under way, and the 25,000 square metre building that will house the line is expected to be completed by May. Plans call for the production line to be operational in time for this autumn’s winter tyre season. The project will create around 100 new jobs at Gundlach’s site in Daufenbach, some 40 miles southeast of Cologne.
Work on a new Ronal innovation centre is now under way. Alloy wheel manufacturer the Ronal Group broke ground at the site of its future facility in Forst, Germany in late September, and on 12 October founded Ronal Technologie GmbH, the company that will take responsibility for the centre’s functions.
Tyre manufacturers in the USA will benefit from the construction of what is said to be largest propylene oxide (PO) and tertiary butyl alcohol (TBA) plant ever built. Plastics, chemicals and refining company LyondellBasell broke ground on its new facility in Texas yesterday and will invest US$2.4 billion – the largest single capital investment in the firm’s history – to set up a plant capable of producing 470,000 tonnes of PO and a million tonnes of TBA per annum. The plant is expected to enter operation in 2021.
The first sods of earth in the construction of the new Continental headquarters in Hannover, Germany were turned yesterday at an official groundbreaking ceremony. The facility, which carries the snappy title Continental Campus, is expected to be finished by the end of 2020 and provide space for 1,250 employees. The entire headquarters workforce should be housed in the new buildings by 2021, the company’s 150th anniversary.
At an event held yesterday, groundbreaking took place for the future Maxion Wheels facility in India. Invited guests, including suppliers, customers, local officials and company management, were present to witness the ceremonial turning of the first sod and unveiling of a plaque to mark the occasion.
With sods of soil sliding from shiny shovels, work on the Continental ‘Taraxagum Lab Anklam’ research and test laboratory officially began on Monday. Construction of the facility will now begin in earnest, and Continental Reifen Deutschland anticipates that the lab, based near Germany’s Baltic coast, will be operational in autumn 2018. Continental is investing a total of 35 million euros in the project, a sum supported by a subsidy of 11.6 million euros from the Ministry of Economics in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Nokian Tyres marked the beginning of building work on the company’s third factory on 20 September. The new greenfield site is located in Dayton (Rhea County), Tennessee, USA. Annual capacity will be 4 million tyres, with expansion potential in the future. The site will also house a distribution facility with a storage capacity of 600,000 tyres. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2018 and the first tyres are to be produced in 2020.
Sri Lankan industrial tyre maker Global Rubber Industries, or GRI, has laid the foundation for its new off-road tyre factory. Groundbreaking took place 4 January and marks the start of construction on a plant that will be built with an investment of US$40 million. The facility will be built adjacent to GRI’s current solid industrial tyre factory in Badalgama, Sri Lanka.
An official groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday for the new Continental tyre factory in the USA. The ceremony, attended by federal, state and local governmental officials, marked the beginning of the construction process, which is expected to be completed in 2019.
Ground was broken and the first stone set in place for the new Michelin plant in Mexico at a ceremony held yesterday and attended by government dignitaries, key customers and company management. Construction of the plant in León – Michelin’s 69th factory globally and 21st in North America – is expected to begin immediately, with completion currently scheduled for late 2018.
In addition to celebrating the 50th anniversary of the opening of its car and light truck tyre factory in Joliette, Canada, last Thursday Bridgestone Americas officially broke ground on expansion work at the plant. Upwards of CAD$300 million (£178.1 million) will be invested over a period of five years and will see the installation of new equipment installed at the Joliette site that will lift production capacity by 3,000 tyres per day to a total of 20,000 tyres a day by 2023.
The China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) reports that its subsidiary Pirelli “recently” held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new facility in Mexico. It shares that the US$360 million has been invested in the new plant so far, and by the end of 2018 the total investment figure will exceed $600 million.
On 1 October 2015 Nexen Tire broke ground on the site of its new plant in Zatec, Czech Republic. The company has committed to investing more than 829 million euros in building the new plant on 650,000 square metres of land in Zatec.
An event was held yesterday to mark the official start of work on Giti Tire’s new facility in the USA. Local and company dignitaries, including Giti Tire executive chairman Enki Tan, were present at the Chester County site in South Carolina to mark the groundbreaking with a ceremonial shovelful of soil.
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