Yokohama breaks ground on €450m Chinese tire factory

Hangzhou, China – Yokohama Rubber (China) Co. has broken ground on a Yuan350 (€456 million) smart tire project in Qiantang district of the city of Hangzhou, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.

City officials as well as Yokohama director Masataka Yamaishi attended the 16 Dec event, reported Hangzhou city’s official government website.

Earlier in November, Yokohama Rubber China published the environmental report for the project, saying the greenfield facility would have a total capacity to produce 14 million passenger car tires.

To be completed in two phases, the project will produce 9 million units of tires in the initial stage and will expand capacity by another 5 million units in the second phase.

The facility, according Yokohama, will include a rubber mixing workshop and a semi-steel radial tire production plant equipped with internal mixers, testing equipment and intelligent hydraulic vulcanisers.

It will also feature “fully automatic moulding machines”, open mixing mills and other production and auxiliary equipment.

"This project aims to create 'digital economy, green manufacturing' and takes energy conservation, emission reduction, process reengineering, and intelligent manufacturing as its core," said Yokohama.

The Japanese group disclosed its plans for the facility earlier in July, saying it was part of a factory relocation process within Hangzhou.

At the time, the Japanese group said it was investing Yen36.7 billion (€212 million) in the new plant.

The new unit will be the first plant to be built under the YRC “one-year plant” challenge detailed in its Yokohama Transformation 2026 (YX2026) strategy. (ERJ report).

Under the challenge, YRC aims to construct ‘low-cost and highly efficient’ plants in one year in order to gain “a strong competitive position in the local market.”

Yokohama’s existing facility in Hangzhou currently produces 6 million units of PCR tires.