Rubber & tire industry in numbers

PROJECTS / RESTRUCTURING

PROJECTS

Michelin North America is studying a $159m expansion project in the US – as discussed during a 10 Dec meeting of Lexington County Council, which agreed to consider financial incentives for the investment by the company which operates a car, light truck and earthmover tire plant in Lexington, with a nameplate capacity of 288ktpa.

ZC Rubber officially started up its new, $280m, Indonesian tire plant in Central Java. ZC’s second overseas plant spans 500,000m2 and is equipped to produce truck & bus tires, two-wheeler tires and bias tires as well as inner tubes, tracks, and carbon black. ZC expects annual sales of $720m from the facility.

Trelleborg is to invest SEK75m (€6.5m) in a new plant to produce marine systems and infrastructure products, near marine & infrastructure engineering and innovation centre at Ahmedabad, western India. It is set for operation in late 2026. Trelleborg sales in India totalled nearly SEK700m in 2023.

China’s Jiangsu Provincial Construction Group has been awarded a contract to build a tire manufacturing plant in Cambodia, it announced 12 Dec – without providing details about the location of the plant or the tire maker involved. However, it said that the factory would have annual capacity to produce nearly 8m car and truck & bus tires.

Yokohama Rubber (China) Co. has broken ground on a €456m smart tire project in Qiantang district of the city of Hangzhou. The greenfield facility is slated to have a total capacity to produce 14m/yr passenger car tires: 9m units of tires in phase I, then adding another 5m units in phase II. The project is part of a relocation of Yokohama’s existing facility in Hangzhou, which currently has capacity to produce 6m/yr of PCR tires.

Pyrum Innovations AG expects to break ground on its second end-of-life tire (ELT) pyrolysis plant next spring, having submitted a filing under the ‘federal emissions control act’ and documents for the early start of construction on the new factory in Perl-Besch, Saarland.

Chaoyang Long March Tyre Co. has broken ground on a Yuan550m expansion of its tire production facility in Longcheng District, Chaoyang. Once completed, it will have the capacity to produce 1.2m units of all-steel truck & bus tires per year with an annual output value of Yuan1.485bn. Long March recently upgraded its facility to have an overall capacity of 4.5m units/yr.

M&A AND RESTRUCTURING

Continental AG expects to start the sale process of ContiTech’s OE solutions (OESL) business in Q1/25 - towards making ContiTech more focused on industrial customers. The automotive rubber parts business, which employs over 16,000 people across 16 countries, is currently being presented to potential buyers and partners

Continental AG is advancing the spin-off of its Automotive group sector, with the aim to create a ‘European’ entity (Societas Europaea, SE) to be listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange by the yearend. The independent company will operate under a new brand, which is to be launched by the end of April 2025.

Datwyler is launching a ‘business transformation’ initiative for 2025-2027,called ForwardNow, to improve annual profit by around CHF24m (€26m). The ‘transformation programme’ is expected to result in one-time costs of around CHF38m in fiscal 2024, of which around CHF9m will be attributed to “extraordinary impairments”. Datwyler anticipates cumulative profit improvements of about CHF52m over the three-year programme. For its fiscal 2023, Datwyler reported earnings down 20% year-on-year to CHF120.4m on sales about level at CHF1.1bn.

Hexpol Americas has launched a reorganisation programme, including the closure of its facility in Kennedale, Texas by mid-2025, with operations there relocated to other North American facilities. Furthermore, Hexpol Americas has divested its production site in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to equity firm Karo Ventures. The unit had an annual sales of $7m (€6.6m).

SHARE PRICES

Leading tire manufacturers’ share-price trends

Leading rubber product manufacturers’ share-price trends

                                                                                                                                MATERIALS

Natural rubber pricing-trend data compiled by ANRPC indicates relative stability during November and in the first two weeks of December.There was though some upward momentum for RSS3 grade teading in Bangkok, with an uptick taking prices to $247.61/100kg as at 29 Nov. Other prices shown included: RSS4 in Kotayam, India at $225.05 (12 Dec); Latex Malaysia $162.88 (13 Dec); SMR20 in Kuala Lumpur, $205.4 (13 Dec); and STR20 in Bangkok $198.96 (28 Nov).

Natural rubber futures declined last week as supply concerns, driven by bad weather conditions, eased in the second trading week of December. NR futures closed the week ending 13 Dec lower across all major exchanges, driven by “speculative selling and long liquidations by commodity funds,” reported Japan Exchange Group 16 Dec. 

Selected rubber futures price trends on major trading exchanges

(ERJ calculation for selected futures)

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