Black Arrow 'nears construction launch' for Saudi tire plant

Hanover, Germany – After several near-launches over recent years, a project to establish a mega-scale tire manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia finally looks set for take-off.

That's according to senior officials of the lead project company Blatco (Black Arrow Tire Co.), who envisage construction work on the plant starting by the second quarter of 2024.

Located at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, the €1.4-billion project is designed to produce 15 million passenger car (PCR) and truck & bus (TBR) tires a year. 

Blatco aims to "start the engineering work by the fourth quarter to this year and, if not, then Q1 2024," CEO Adel Al Masood told ERJ in an interview at Tire Technology Expo, 21-23 March in Hanover.

"Construction will then start three months later. So by the middle of 2024," said Al Masood, accompanied by Blatco chairman Abdullah Al Wahibi, and vice chairman Hassan Al Othman.

However, the project is still awaiting the green light from project partner Kumho, which signed an MoU with Blatco regarding the Saudi tire project in January 2022.

While the Korean tire maker still has to finalise an agreement to go ahead with the project, Al Masood commented: “We feel comfortable that will be done before the end of this year.”  

Finalising all the details requires "a lot of due diligence and agreement on many, many details,” added the CEO, noting that a Kumho team was, at that same time, visiting the project site and meeting government agencies in Saudi Arabia.

We will report further on this project in the March/April issue of European Rubber Journal magazine.