TOKYO — Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd is planning to build a $165 million plant in India’s Andhra Pradesh Province for off-the-road tires, its third such plant in India and due on stream by early 2023.
The new plant, to be operated by Yokohama’s Alliance Tire Group subsidiary, will be rated at 55 metric tons of tires a day, the company said. ATG already runs two OTR tire plants in India, in Dahej, Gujarat and Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, producing agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery tires.
Yokohama also operates five other plants for OTR tires — three in Japan, one in Israel and one in Vietnam — and claims an overall capacity of 425 tons per day for tires of these types.
Construction on the factory is set to start in the third quarter of 2020, with production scheduled for the first quarter of 2023, YRC said. The plant site covers roughly 3.5 million square feet, which provides room for expansion, the company added.
The factory will be located in the Atchutapuram Industrial Park near Visakhapatnam, a port city on the Bay of Bengal about 500 miles north of Chennai, which is considered an advantageous location for exporting finished products, YRC said.
Under its medium-term management plan, Grand Design 2020 (GD2020), Yokohama has positioned off-highway tires as a “growth driver.”
ATG, which accounts for 12% of Yokohama Rubber’s global sales, has reported growing sales of OTR tire products the past few years, prompting the company to increase the Dahej’s capacity over 60% in 2018-19 with a $45 million investment.
“However, expectations for further increases in demand for ATG’s off-highway tires led to the decision to build an entirely new plant,” Yokohama said.
In fiscal 2019, ATG’s sales were $649 million, up 3% over 2018.
The company indicated in 2018 it was considering adding a fourth plant under the ATG umbrella.
The company also reports some OTR tire sales — including those of solid tire producer Aichi Tire Industry Co. Ltd. that is acquired in 2017 — under its Yokohama tire division.