(Akron/Tire Review) Falken Tire Corp. announced that Hideo Honda, chief executive officer and chairman, has retired as of Jan. 1. Honda will return to Japan where he will serve as an advisor to Sumitomo Rubber Industries for the remainder of the year.
Replacing Honda as CEO and chairman is Yasushi (Tank) Tanaka, a former director at SRI Tire Trading Ltd. in Tokyo. Tanaka joined SRI in 1976 and spent the majority of his career in the export and OE departments.
Japanese corporation Sumitomo Rubber Industries will soon take its golf and tennis equipment business to the stock exchange, financial news sources have reported. What the company plans to do with the funds remains unclear. Sumitomo Rubber Industries is currently the sixth largest tyre manufacturer in the world.
In Sri Lanka, the past week has seen considerable interest in trading in the shares of Kelani Tyre and, as a result, the company’s share price rose by 18 per cent.
Sumitomo Rubber industries has announced its intention to quadruple its tyre production in China within three years, in order to meet the sharply rising demand in that country.
SRI intends to invest between 10 billion and 15 billion Yen ($85m to $128m) over this period. Production at the SRI plant in Jiangsu province, near Shanghai, will rise from the current 1,500 tonnes a month to 6,000 tonnes.
SRI also said that it plans to build a new factory in China to supply tyres to Japanese car manufacturers with factories in China.
The Trelleborg Group has been working since the day after Christmas to ensure that none of its employees is missing and has organised relief efforts, primarily in Sri Lanka. Trelleborg, which has approximately 22,000 employees, has operations in several of the countries affected. Reports to date indicate that none of Trelleborg’s employees are missing. The company is continuing to gather information to establish the certainty of this.
The Group has approximately 800 employees in Sri Lanka. They have been heavily affected, and some have lost their homes. Since the disaster first struck, Trelleborg has focused its relief efforts on Sri Lanka. This has involved providing food, medicine and clothing to disaster victims. Efforts to rebuild homes that were demolished are ongoing.
The company has allocated just over 2 million Krone for relief to Sri Lanka. In addition, the Group has donated 100,000 Krone each to Save the Children and the Red Cross. Individual Trelleborg employees have also donated money toward relief efforts. Trelleborg’s two plants in Sri Lanka are intact and production is under way.
Japanese tyre manufacture, Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) has again improved its half-year results for the six months ended 30 June. In relation to the previous year, sales rose to £1.102 million, compared with £1.069 million previously. SRI’s operating income improved from £65.1 million in the first half of 2003 to £88.2 million in 2004. Almost 74 per cent of the company’s turnover comes from the tyre business unit. SRI’s operating income remains at 58.5 per cent.
Since 1st of January 2004 the business field Deflation Warning System DWS (Warnair) belongs to Dunlop-Tech GmbH, a 100% daughter company from SRI. So DWS is not part of the joint venture Goodyear Dunlop.
Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. intends to establish a sales network of more than 400 stores in China within two years in and plans to take a 10 per cent share of the Chinese tyre market by 2010. The company, whose first tire factory in China will go onstream in April, aims to develop a customer base in China, where it currently has almost no sales. Sumitomo Rubber teamed up with Tyre Pacific (HK) Ltd. of Hong Kong to create a joint venture to oversee sales in China. The joint venture, SRI-TP JV Co., is capitalized at 6 million US dollars.
Sumitomo Rubber Industries has reported a 50 per cent rise in net profit for the first half of the year, up to 4.79 billion Yen (US$ 40.77 million), compared with 3.2 billion Yen $27.25 m) in 1H 2002. Tyre sales were described as “sluggish” and the figures were boosted by strong sales of sporting goods (notably golf clubs and balls), where operating profits were up 56 per cent, and by cost-cutting measures. SRI maintained its forecast of a record 11 billion Yen ($93.6 m) for the full year.
The merger between Sumitomo Rubber Industries and Ohtsu Tire & Rubber, which began in late 2001, is now complete, making SRI Japan’s second largest tyre manufacturer. The move will see the disappearance of the Ohtsu name as its activities are integrated into the new holding company Falken Tire Trading in an attempt to generate new synergies and reduce costs. Falken tyres will continue to be marketed independently and compete with other brands within the SRI group.
Ohtsu Tire & Rubber is to merge with its parent company, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, from 1st July. Falken brand products will be marketed independently in competition with other SRI group brands. The company ex pects growth in Falken sales and improved product supply due to synergies in all areas from production planning through to logistics.
Sime Darby Bhd has reported a 17% rise in net profit to RM 214.1mil for its first quarter ended Sept 30. “We are quite pleased with the results and if this trend continues, we can beat last year’s performance,” said Sime Darby group chief executive Tan Sri Nik Mohamed Yaacob. Its tyre manufacturing division saw improved profits thanks to production efficiencies and a rise in turnover.
In conjunction with the Japan Research Institute, Sumitomo Rubber Industries has developed tyre modelling software for car manufacturers. It is based on SRI’s existing DigiTire virtual design technology and features a simplified display that makes it simple to calculate properties such as tyre load.
Samir G. Gibara (61), chairman and chief executive officer of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, has been elected to the board of directors of Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. in Kobe, Japan. Gibara’s election is in conjunction with Goodyear’s 10 percent ownership of SRI, following the companies’ global alliance, completed in September 1999. This ownership makes Goodyear SRI’s second-largest shareholder. SRI holds 1.4 percent of Goodyear’s common stock.
As part of the global alliance between Goodyear and Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) Goodyear now owns 10% of SRI making the Americans the second largest shareholder of the Japanese company. The biggest one is Sumitomo Electric Industries owning 29.5%.
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