DAHEJ, India — Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. is expanding production capacity for off-the-road tires by nearly 61 percent at the Dahej factory of its ATC Tires Pvt. Ltd. subsidiary with a $45.5 million investment package that will run through year-end 2019.
Work on the expansion will begin in February, Yokohama said. The project will raise annual capacity at the plant to 91,700 metric tons from 57,000 tons.
Yokohama acquired the plant in July 2016 in its purchase of Alliance Tire Group (ATG).
"With its tire sales on a strong upward trend, Yokohama Rubber decided to expand production capacity to avoid insufficient supply capacity in the medium term," the company said.
ATC Tires has a second tire plant in India, in Tirunelveli in the state of Tamil Nadu.
The Dahej facility, which began operations in 2015, produces three core ATG tire brands — Alliance, Galaxy and Primex.
The products are used on various off-road vehicles, including agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery.
The new investment is part of a Yokohama strategy to expand its commercial tire business.
In October 2015, the Japanese group started manufacturing truck and bus tires at a new U.S. plant in Mississippi. It acquired ATG in 2016 and Aichi Tire Industry Co. Ltd., a maker of industrial machinery tires, in March 2017.