Conti's new Americas HQ focuses on employees, sustainability

FORT MILL, S.C. — Continental Tire the Americas ceremoniously opened its new headquarters in Fort Mill — a sustainability-focused, 90,000-sq.-ft. building situated on 33 acres near the North Carolina border — March 21 with remarks from company officials, local and state government representatives, including South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, and building design partners.

The facility has the capacity for 350 employees and is designed with expansion in mind.

While located in rural Lancaster County, the headquarters’ address is Fort Mill, a town of about 24,000 located about 20 miles south of Charlotte, N.C. 

It’s the latest investment in the Carolinas by the U.S. subsidiary of Germany’s Continental A.G. 

“Who would have imagined when we moved to the Palmetto State in 2009, that we would have invested over $800 million in our facilities across the state?” CTA CEO Jochen Etzel asked rhetorically.

“The U.S. is a strategic growth market for Continental and particularly for our tire business.”

Conti budgeted $20 million in 2020 to cover the costs of expanding the campus it opened in Fort Mill in 2009. The facility was originally set to be open by mid-2022. 

The building was designed to be “so much more than a typical office with desks and meeting rooms,” Etzel said.

“Our objective for this building was to create a workplace destination that our team of over 650 would want to come to.”

With that goal in mind, Continental asked for employee input in design choices. Employees weighed in on options from types of chairs to cubicle layouts to room designs. 

The building features a mix of unique workspaces, including private pods and focus rooms, as well as unassigned “hotel desks” for employees who aren’t typically in the office or who want a change of scenery during their workday. 

The office has several collaborative spaces, including two break rooms with kitchens and lounging areas, meeting rooms designed for video calls and conference rooms overlooking a massive Continental logo. Workers can take advantage of health and wellness spaces, such as a prayer and meditation room and a yoga/exercise studio, as well as lactation rooms.

The building — which was designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification standards — was developed using sustainable methods that preserved the hills of the region. It features floor-to-ceiling windows to showcase the natural surroundings and bring in natural light. The campus has 840 solar panels, which contribute up to 25% offset of the building’s electricity usage, split between the roof and in the parking lot. 

The lot also offers 10 charging stations for electric vehicles and motorcycles. Other sustainability features include LED lighting, a carpet made with recycled materials, low VOC paint and rainwater harvesting. Future plans call for adding trails to the wooded area surrounding the building.

During the grand opening event, Lancaster County officials presented Conti with a plaque certifying March 21, 2024, as Continental Tire the Americas Day in the county. Continental also made a donation of $10,000 to local first responders.

The building shared its grand opening with the grand opening of Conti’s Retread Solutions Development Center in nearby Rock Hill, S.C.

The new development center is designed to develop and improve retreading processes and technology for the ContiLifeCycle retread system. The center works to bring the most innovative and up-to-date retread processes to Conti’s Retread Solutions Partners and the fleets they work with.

Continental has only 20 years in the retreading business compared with its century-plus history in the tire industry, said Renato Sarzano, senior vice president for truck tires Americas, at an opening tour for media March 21.

“We are very new to the business, and this is a big opportunity,” he said.

The development center, like the headquarters, has sustainability as one of its key missions. Conti is developing technologies to ensure a true cradle-to-grave approach to commercial tires, combining new materials — commercial tires are made with Conti’s retreadable 3G Casings — with the ContiConnect digital tire monitoring system to ensure tires are properly inflated and kept in an ideal condition for retreading.

The center also will serve as a place of education. It’s designed to offer both hands-on and virtual training.

The center is developing new innovations, such as RFID (radio-frequency identification) scanning technology that allows a carcass to be tracked automatically throughout the retreading process. The RFID tag will communicate with retread machines throughout the process to ID the tire model, size and tread of the tire. The machines are automated to those specifications to ensure the correct carcass gets the correct tread. 

The technology helps with tracking a tire through its service — as the carcass goes through multiple lives, the owner can see how the tread and carcass are wearing over time, Conti said.

Other technology being used at the center includes a shearography machine that finds imperfections that can’t be seen by the naked eye. The center also is developing virtual reality goggles that would allow the Conti team to examine a tire, carcass or retread alongside a retread partner and answer questions.