Linglong insists 'still to decide' Europe plant location

Shandong, China - Chinese tire maker Linglong Tire has denied that it has already selected the location for its second overseas tire production facility.

"We have not decided where to build our second overseas plant yet," a Linglong Tire spokesman insisted in a  24 Feb written statement to ERJ. "Everything is under consideration right now."

The comments were in response to ERJ 's  23 Feb report in which a source close to the project identified  Serbia as Linglong's chosen location for its first plant in Europe.

Last year, the Chinese company revealed that it was in communication with governments and inward investment agencies in a number of European countries.

In July, Linglong chairman and president Wang Feng met with Serbia’s new president, Aleksandar Vucic, during Vucic’s swearing-in ceremony.

Linglong — the world’s No. 20 tire maker with 2015 sales of $1.35 billion — is pursuing a “3+3″ strategy, which envisions three plants in China and three based overseas with combined annual capacity of 90 million tires.

The company opened its first overseas plant in 2014, a passenger tire factory in Chonburi, Thailand. It added capacity in 2015 for truck/bus tires and earlier this year disclosed plans to add capacity for 400,000 bias-ply tires there.