News

OSAKA, JAPAN - December 8, 2011 - TOYO TIRE & RUBBER CO., LTD. (President and CEO: Kenji Nakakura) announced that an opening ceremony was held today at their new passenger and light truck tire factory in China. Known as Toyo Tire (Zhangjiagang) Co., Ltd., it is located in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province.

Approximately 350 individuals were invited to attend the ceremony including Mr. Hou Fengxia and Mr. Yao Linrong, officials and industry leaders from Zhangjiagang City as well as the region, and Toyo Tires customers. The guests, together with around 100 people from the Toyo Tires group, celebrated the completion of the factory.

At the ceremony, President Nakakura addressed the attendees and delivered these encouraging words: “Despite the challenges brought on by the East Japan Earthquake, the Toyo Tires Group pressed forward with the construction of this factory as planned. So it is that we have arrived at this auspicious day. Though we are the newest tire company to open a factory in China, we will attain the manufacturing of high-quality goods like no other firm but Toyo Tires can. From here, the next chapter in Toyo Tires’ history will begin, and we will grow and flourish.”

The demand for passenger and light truck replacement tires in China is forecasted to double by 2015, keeping pace with the country’s rapid economic development. Toyo Tire (Zhangjiagang) Co., Ltd. is being positioned as the key manufacturing point for passenger and light truck tires in China, as Toyo Tires works to build the foundation for a global production and supply structure. Featuring state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment, the factory is primed to produce about two million high-quality tires per year to meet China’s vigorous future demand.

Toyo Tires will continue to judiciously monitor and evaluate the market environment in China and around the world in order to consider increasing and strengthening their manufacturing facilities to meet future demand.

(President Nakakura giving his address at the Opening Ceremony)	(Ribbon cutting, to celebrate the completion of the construction)

The new factory in China
Toyo Tire (Zhangjiagang) Co., Ltd. has as its factory concept: “Resource saving, high product quality, high productivity, eliminating the requirement for complex technical skill.”

(1) Resource saving
The factory exercises minimum energy consumption and is sensitive to the environment. Implementing state-of-the-art technology in tire manufacturing and measures to save energy, redundancy is eliminated, so as to lower energy consumption by 30% as compared to Toyo Tires factories in Japan.

(2) High product quality
The factory is designed to manufacture high performance tires. Elements of Toyo Tires’ distinctive modern production methods (A.T.O.M.) is adopted. It has already introduced and operating in the factories in Japan and U.S. This methods minimize inconsistencies in tire product quality. It takes trace management structure through quality check during the production processes and using automated tire inspection devices.

(3) High productivity
By adopting the elements of Toyo Tires’ distinctive modern production methods (A.T.O.M.), production lead time is shortened and the steps in the production process are reduced, so that the factory can manufacture with higher efficiency and productivity.

(4) Eliminating the requirement for complex technical skills
The factory creates a work environment which is gentle to the workers and fosters ease of work. In the tire manufacturing process, automation of production processes and IT technology are applied as much as possible in order to achieve manufacturing of high quality tires without demanding complex technical skills from workers.

In addition to the Toyo Tire (Zhangjiagang) Co., Ltd. factory opened today, Toyo Tires also plans to build a new factory in Malaysia, targeting April 2013 for operations. Thus, Toyo Tires is working to achieve their goal of a worldwide production supply structure of 45 million tires by 2015.