US Goodyear begins China tyre factory expansion

David Haydon

02-Nov-2016

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Goodyear Tire & Rubber broke ground on a $485m expansion of its tyre factory in China, the US-based company announced on Wednesday.

The factory, located in the Pulandian district of China’s Liaodong peninsula, is about 150 miles (242km) southwest from the North Korean border. According to Goodyear, the plant currently produces 10m car tyres and 500,000 truck tyres per year.

The expansion project is expected to be finished by 2020. Goodyear expects plant capacity will increase by approximately 5m tyres a year.

Goodyear said that market demand for premium, large-rim-diameter consumer tires in China and the Asia Pacific region is both strong and growing. By the time the expansion is complete, the company predicts 17-inch rim tyres (or larger) to account for almost 60% of its replacement tyre sales volume in China.

Tyres are the main end market for styrene butadiene rubber (SBR).

Goodyear said it was the first global tyre manufacturer to enter China when it built its previous plant in the nearby city of Dalian in 1994. The company moved production to the Pulandian factory in 2012 when expansion inside the city proper was deemed not feasible.

The automotive industry is a major global consumer of petrochemicals which contributes more than a third of the raw material costs of an average vehicle. ICIS tracks the movement of petrochemical raw material costs in auto production both globally and regionally with the weighted ICIS Basket of Automotive Petrochemicals (IBAP).

ICIS produces a monthly Global Automotive report covering the major automotive chemicals markets, the auto-industry, the IBAPs and macroeconomic trends. For more information on the report and details on how to subscribe, please click here

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