DATE : 2017-05-04
Finland-based Nokian Tyres is planning to build its first North American tyre manufacturing plant in Dayton, Tennessee, the company announced late on Wednesday.
The company will be investing $360m to build the plant, which will concentrate on the production of car and light truck all-season tyres for North American vehicles.
The plant is expected to have a capacity to produce 4m tyres/year and will include a distribution facility with a storage capacity for 600,000 tyres. The facility will have room for Nokian Tyres to expand capacity to meet future demand.
The company plans to break ground on the project in early 2018 and start up tyre production in 2020.
Nokian Tyres has been best-known for producing winter tyre brands and said it has seen strong year-on-year growth in tyre sales in both Canada and the US.
In 2016, the company increased its warehouse capacity in North America with the opening of a distribution centre in Longueuil, Quebec, Canada, which has a storage capacity of 200,000 tyres.
Globally, Nokian Tyres has two other tyre manufacturing facilities in Nokia, Finland, and in Vsevolozhsk, Russia.
The tyre industry is a major consumer of styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), which is a derivative of butadiene (BD) and styrene.
Source Icis News