The Yokohama Rubber Co. recently held an opening ceremony to commemorate the completion of the Suzhou Yokohama Tire Co. plant for manufacturing truck/bus steel radial tires.

Yokohama Rubber had been constructing the plant in Suzhou City, China. Once plant operations begin, the tiremaker will be manufacturing truck/bus tires in four countries: Japan, the U.S., Thailand and China.

The opening ceremony was attended by approximately 280 invited guests including tire distributors in many Chinese provinces and Suzhou City administrators as well as by Yokohama Rubber president and representative director Tadanobu Nagumo and managing corporate officer Seiji Takai.

In his remarks, Nagumo said, "Under the concept of a small-scale, integrated manufacturing system, we introduced Yokohama Rubber's latest technology and facilities for the construction of the new plant that has been designed with sufficient consideration about environmental protection. While we have so far relied on the import from Japan of TB tires for sale in China, our capability of supplying the tires to Chinese markets will dramatically increase as a result of the new plant's completion."

Suzhou Yokohama Tire was formed in April 2006 with an investment of $27.1 million by Yokohama Rubber (China) Co. With an annual manufacturing capacity of 340,000 tires, Suzhou Yokohama Tire is scheduled to begin full operation by May 2009, employing 400 people. Yokohama has invested a total of 9.5 billion yen (approx. $101 million) in the construction of the new plant and plans to continue additional investments to expand the capacity in accordance with future sales growths. (Courtesy of Tire Review)