Cimcorp to automate Sentury Tire plant in Thailand

Ulvila, Finland – Cimcorp has secured an order worth nearly €30 million to supply a turnkey material handling system for Qingdao Sentury Tire Co Ltd’s new factory 100 miles outside Thai capital of Bangkok.

The deal with the Chinese tire maker is Cimcorp’s biggest ever order, the Ulvila-based factory automation company said in a 24 June announcement.

The system will cover the handling of PCR (passenger car radial) green tires from the tire-building machines to the curing presses, as well as finished tire sorting, palletising, warehousing and shipping.

Cimcorp expects that the operation to supply the system will be completed in various stages during 2015 and 2016.

The automation system will include six independent automation lines, each consisting of monorail systems for the unloading of the tire-building machines and transfer of green tires to the curing buffers; green tire buffer storage; spotting stations; and monorail transfers for press delivery.

Cimcorp’s scope of supply also includes finished tire buffers and palletising stations, rail guided vehicle (RGV) loops, stacker cranes in a high-bay warehouse and shipping buffers in the dispatch area.

The Finnish company said its warehouse control software (WCS) will control the material flow and will integrate various technologies – robots, monorails, RGVs, stacker cranes and pallet conveyors – into a “seamless” system.

“We want to build a modern tire plant with the latest automation technologies to ensure high product quality and high productivity from the beginning,” said Qin Long, president and CEO of Qingdao Sentury Tire,

Established in 2009, Sentury manufactures and sells tires under the brand names ‘Landsail’, ‘Delinte’ and ‘Sentury’, with 13 ranges and more than 400 sizes.

He added that Sentury’s first project with Cimcorp “convinced us that they are a competent and reliable partner for us for the Thailand project.”