Conti gets loan for Brazil plant
BRUSSELS-Continental A.G. has secured a $51 million loan from the European Investment Bank to help finance the construction of its passenger and light truck tire plant in Brazil.
The new plant, in Salvador de Bahia in northeastern Brazil, will have annual capacity at start-up of 4 million units, most of which will be exported to North America. Conti has budgeted $260 million for the project, which will include capacity for medium radial truck tires by 2008.
Conti broke ground in October on the 1.1 million-sq.-ft. factory. It should be on stream by year-end 2007.
Nokian shifts off-take agreement
NOKIA, Finland-Nokian Tyres P.L.C. is shifting off-take production of heavy truck tires to Bridgestone Corp. from Group Michelin and has contracted India's Balkrishna Tyres Ltd. to make agricultural tires.
Bridgestone will make Nokian-brand truck tires at its plant in Bilbao, Spain. Michelin had been making them at subsidiary plants in Olsztyn, Poland, and Budapest, Hungary, for the past four years.
Bridgestone owns an 18.5-percent share in Nokian.
Michelin eyes Egyptian tire maker
PARIS-Group Michelin has bid an undisclosed amount to buy financially ailing Egyptian tire maker Transport & Engineering Co. in Alexandria from the Egyptian government.
Trenco, as the firm is known, makes bias and radial tires and tubes for passenger cars, light and medium trucks, motorcycles and bicycles at a 48-year-old plant in Alexandria's Smouha district.