TOKYO (April 26, 2013) — Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. (YRC) has picked east central Mississippi as the site for a $300 million truck and bus tire plant it plans to build over the coming two years.
Yokohama has designated a 500-acre site near West Point, Miss., as the proposed site for the plant, which would be capable of producing 1 million tires a year in the project's first phase and eventually up to 4 million tires "in accordance with future business growth."
Yokohama wants to build its new plant in West Point, Miss., near the Alabama border.
Yokohama said it is awaiting legislative approval from the state for the site, an event the tire maker expects to occur this morning at a special session of the Mississippi legislature called by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant. The Mississippi legislature ended its 2013 legislative term several weeks ago.
Construction is set to begin in September, YRC said, with production to start by October 2015.
Yokohama, which supplies truck and bus tires to customers in North America from its GTY TIre Co. joint venture plant (with Continental Tire the Americas) in Mount Vernon, Ill., and from plants in Japan and Thailand, said it considered building a plant in the U.S. "necessary" to meet increasingly growing demand for its brand and further strengthen a system aimed at "local production for local consumption."
West Point is a town of about 11,000 inhabitants. It is the county seat of Clay County, located southeast of Memphis, northeast of Jackson, Miss., and due west of Birmingham, Ala. The county's major businesses currently include Southern Ionics Inc., Babcock and Wilcox, and Haas Outdoors Inc./Mossy Oak Camouflage Co.
Neither Yokohama nor state officials disclosed specifics as to designated plot of land's exact coordinates.
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