This year was one of substantial tire manufacturing investment within the NAFTA trade zone – and in the case of one tiremaker, a major plant closing.
In November, Sumitomo Rubber North America Inc. (SRNA) shuttered its consumer, TBR and motorcycle tire production facility in Buffalo, N.Y., a plant it had taken over from Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in 2015.
At the same time, Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. (SRI), SRNA’s parent company, announced the dissolution of its Sumitomo Rubber USA LLC (SRUSA) subsidiary.
In a statement issued on Nov. 7, SRI said that the “company and its U.S. subsidiaries have cooperated to improve the production structure and operational efficiencies.
“However, the business environment remains severe due to the deterioration of productivity and profitability at SRUSA and profitability is hard to improve in the long term.
“Based on the assessment that, in the North American market, sale of tires produced at the SRUSA facility could not be profitable, we've decided to discontinue all production activities at SRUSA and dissolve it.”
SRNA’s Buffalo plant was one of the oldest, still-operating tire factories in the U.S., dating back to 1923.
It had the capacity to build around 7,300 passenger tires, 2,700 light truck tires and 2,300 TBR tires per day, according to MTD research.
Other international tire manufacturers have double-downed on NAFTA zone production facility and capabilities investment.
Three — Yokohama Tire Corp., Zhongce Rubber Group. Co. Ltd. (ZC Rubber) and Sailun Tire Americas (STA) — broke ground on future manufacturing plants during 2024.
Yokohama’s plant in Saltillo, Mexico, represents a capital investment of $380 million and is scheduled to begin production in 2027, with a planned, annual output of five million units.
Construction also is underway at ZC Rubber’s new plant in Mexico, which represents an investment of $550 million and will be located just 150 miles from the U.S. border.
ZC Rubber officials say the factory will be up and running by the end of next year. It will initially have an annual capacity of 13.5 million passenger tires, plus substantial OTR tire production capacity.
When fully operational, STA’s factory in Mexico, a $240 million joint venture with Sailun Singapore, will manufacture six million “semi-steel radial” tires a year, with the possibility of later producing an additional 1.6 million units.
The three factories will be the first new tire manufacturing plants built in Mexico by non-native companies since 2018, when Michelin North America Inc. opened a light truck tire manufacturing facility in that country.
Pirelli Tire North America Inc. also has been particularly aggressive in expanding its capabilities in Mexico.
In September 2021, its parent company, Pirelli & Cie SpA, approved a $36 million investment in the firm’s Guanajuato plant to boost annual production capacity there to 7.2 million units.
And two years ago, Pirelli announced it would invest an additional $15 million in the factory, where it unveiled a new research and development center more than a year ago.
Ongoing investments
At the start of 2023, Michelin North America Inc. announced plans to invest around $220 million at three of its plants in Nova Scotia.
The first phase of the project, a $98.3 million expansion of the company’s Bridgewater, Novia Scotia plant, “is on track, with the first tire expected to be produced early in 2025,” a Michelin spokesperson recently told MTD.
Construction at Bridgestone Americas Inc.’s TBR tire plant in Warren County, Tenn., “is still on track with (its) original schedule to facilitate new technology development capabilities,” according to Bridgestone officials.
The $550 million investment, which was announced in summer 2022, is expected to expand the Warren County facility by 850,000 square feet.
It also will enable Bridgestone to manufacture TBR tires equipped with radio frequency identification tags.
However, “full start of (additional) production has been postponed from the original plan due to market conditions, which we continue to monitor closely,” a Bridgestone spokesperson recently told MTD.
Hankook Tire America Corp. says it’s “currently about half-way through the construction process” at its consumer tire plant in Clarksville, Tenn. “The project remains on track.”
In August 2021, Hankook announced it would invest $1.6 billion at the plant to double its passenger and light truck tire production to 11 million units, while also adding TBR tire production.
Rob Williams, Hankook Tire America Corp. president, said the addition of TBR tire production at the facility “is a vital step to our growth in the medium truck tire market.”
This past summer, Goodyear announced that it’s investing more than $418 million in its consumer tire plant in Napanee, Ontario.
The capital infusion is expected to be completed by the middle of 2027 and will consist of both new equipment and construction that will enable the Akron, Ohio-based company to build tires for electric vehicles and other applications.
