MIAMI—Sentury Tire Americas, importer and distributor of the Landsail and Delinte brands, is undeterred by the recent Department of Commerce's final determination on antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese-sourced car and light truck tires.
“We are a global brand with a marketing and manufacturing presence beyond China and the United States,” said Maxwell Wee, director of sales for Sentury Tire Americas, a subsidiary of Qindao Sentury Tire Co. Ltd., which was given the “separate rate companies” duties totaling 56.17 percent of the declared customs value.
“We view this recent decision as a temporary setback and are proceeding with our worldwide expansion.”
Demonstrating its resolve, Sentury Tire moved to a new head-quarters/ warehouse in Miami in late June and opened a 50,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in Memphis, Tenn., in February to service its customer base in the Northeast and Central states.
The new Miami headquarters, located five miles from the previous site in north Miami, accommodates additional marketing and support staff the company has added and doubles the warehouse space available, Sentury said, without disclosing the square footage.
“The new warehouse is ideal for us because it has great transport links including a rail spur to help expedite faster distributor shipments,” Mr. Wee said.
“Our business is growing and we have ambitious plans for expanding our Delinte and Landsail brands,” he added.
Sentury said it uses its warehouses primarily to service fill-in orders to ensure distributors are properly stocked with the tires they need. Otherwise, Sentury ships about 90 percent of orders directly to its distributors.
In addition, parent company Qingdao Sentury is building a plant near Bangkok, Thailand, to complement its manufacturing capacity in China. The facility, due on stream this fall, will be capable of building the complete line of Landsail and Delinte tires, Sentury Tire said, including new light truck AT, HT and MT tires.
Manufacturing capacity will be built out in two phases, starting with 5 million tires annually before expanding to 12 million tires sometime next year.
The company said on its website it is midway through the first phase of a substantial development process:
c Phase 1 (2009 - 2014): Build a projected 14 million annual capacity in passenger tires;
c Phase 2 (2015 - 2018): Add 18 million annual capacity; and
c Phase 3 (2019-2022): Reach 48.08 million annual capacity, including a full range of summer and winter tires for PCR, UHP, SUV,CUV, LTR, VAN, A/T and M/T, as well as aircraft tires.
The tire maker said its portfolio continues to grow, with its Delinte line launched in 2009 followed by a newer Landsail line in 2010. Sentury claims it has obtained five national invention patents, two national utility model patents, 15 national design patents and two European Union design patents, noting on its website: “We have rapidly become one of the leading companies in (the) tire producing sector worldwide in ultra-high-performance tire development and manufacturing.”
“We expect our tire sales to continue to be robust for the remainder of 2015 and, even in light of the tariff/duties that are being levied, Sentury Tire still has a program that will work for our distributors and dealers to maintain their competitiveness,” Mr. Wee said.
Qingdao Sentury was the 60th largest tire maker worldwide in 2013 with sales of $286.6 million, according to Tire Business' annual ranking of the world's tire companies. North Amer-ican sales are not known.