On the afternoon of 17 August, Yu Aihua, Party Secretary of Hefei City, Anhui Province, held talks with Christian Kötz, Head of the Continental Tyres division. Tyrepress China learned that Yu and Kötz talked about “accelerating the construction of the fourth phase of the (Hefei factory) project” and planning the follow-up “automotive electronics, R&D centre project”.
In May this year, China’s environmental protection department imposed a penalty on the Cooper Kunshan factory, restricting production on the grounds of violating the “Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law”. At the same time, the tyre manufacturing base was fined 240,000 yuan.
Plans for two Saudi Arabia tyre factory projects were announced during 2022. In January 2022, Black Arrow Tire Company (Blatco) agreed to a tyre factory construction joint venture with Kumho. By June 2022, Kingdom Tyres, which describes itself as Saudi’s largest tyre producer, signed a provisional investment agreement with the Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu. Here Tyres & Accessories considers the latest developments with both projects and asks if the market is big enough for both factories?
Roughly a year ago, then relatively-newly appointed Yokohama Europe president Gregorio Borgo, told us that the company has plans to invest in a factory “at the heart of Europe”. 12 months on, Tyres & Accessories once again spoke with Gregorio Borgo as well as Yokohama Europe chairman Hiroyuki Shiori in order to find out how the company’s growth and its interconnected factory plans have been progressing.
Tata’s decision to build a new electric car battery plant in Somerset has been welcomed by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. The institute said the gigafactory represents a “good start” in the drive to revive an ailing UK automotive sector, but emphasised the need for additional investment in order to support growth and EVs as part of the country’s decarbonisation strategy.
Tata Sons has confirmed that it will invest £4 billion in building a 40GW battery cell gigafactory in the UK. The plant will supply JLR and Tata Motors commencing from 2026. With the foundering of BritishVolt’s plans for something similar, as the car parc transitions to electric propulsion, the Tata investment is a welcome boost for the UK car parc and for its OE tyre suppliers.
Tyrepress China has learned that Chinese tyre manufacturer Haohua is preparing to invest US$500 million to build a tyre factory in Binh Phuoc, Vietnam. The products produced will cover semi-steel radial tyres and all-steel radial tyres.
18 years after MG Rover collapsed and was bought by SAIC (Shanghai Industry Automotive Corporation) and 7 years after the carmaker moved MG production to China in 2016, SAIC is planning to build a new car factory in Europe. The location has not yet been finalised and details of which brands will be made there are scant, but as the European car parc transitions to electric vehicles, it appears that the production history of the MG Rover is going full circle.
The Double Coin Jiangsu factory recently applied to the local environmental protection department to expand its OTR tyre production capacity. The Jiangsu factory is a joint venture established in January 2024. The company can produce 2.9 million all-steel radial (truck) tyres and 74,000 OTR tyres annually.
Elliott Investment Management L.P.’s 11 May open letter to Goodyear’s board of directors sent shockwaves through the company and the markets. Essentially, Elliott’s expounded on its “deep conviction in the opportunity for Goodyear to improve after more than a decade of underperformance”, which was widely interpreted as laying down the gauntlet to Goodyear’s board and most senior executives. With Elliott calling pistols at dawn in the mid-west, the question is: is it time to buckle up and circle the wagons in Akron or are vultures circling over Goodyear? Here, Tyres & Accessories presents an in-depth analysis of Elliott’s arguments for enormous change, critically evaluating the problematic areas Elliott identifies along the way. In order to support our analysis, we spoke to senior executives close to Goodyear, those with first-hand management experience in Akron, financial analysts and third-party market researchers.
At the end of May, Sentury published details relating to the development of its overseas factories. The tyremaker said data for April and May 2023 showed that its production capacity was temporarily unable to meet orders. Therefore, the company believes there is an urgent need to increase production capacity in order to meet customer demand. According to Sentury’s statement, the overseas tyre traders and retailers they cooperate with include Discount Tire, OAK Tyres, Inter-Sprint, American Omni and Turbo Wholesale.
Qingdao Sentury Tire Co. Ltd. has received the regulatory approval to invest US$296.78 million in the construction of its previously announced Morocco tyre manufacturing project. The “Certificate of Overseas Investment of Enterprises” was issued by the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Commerce on 5 June 2023 and is valid for two years.
Michelins plans to invest 200 million yuan (including 7.515 million yuan in environmental protection investment) to expand car tyre production capacity at its Shenyang, China factory by 1.3 million tyres. Tyrepress China learned that this project would expand the production capacity of passenger car tyres on the dismantled truck and bus tyre production line. In other words, the expansion plans won’t add workshop area. Rather, new production equipment will be installed in the original workshop to realise the increase.
Fast-growing tyre wholesaler, GB Tyres, has begun construction of its new Oldbury tyre “storage and distribution facility”. As we reported back in September 2022, despite existing storage space of roughly 250,000 square feet across two large sites in the midlands the business requires much more space.
Nexen Tire is considering eight southeastern US states as the possible location for a new $1.3-billion tyre factory project. According to stock market filing published on 18 May, Nexen is set to make a decision on the project by the end of 2023, with a view to getting the factory operational by 2028-2029.
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