More tyres

Bridgestone's wholly owned subsidiary Bridgestone Europe is to build a tyre plant in Hungary to make radial tyres for passenger vehicles and light trucks. Bridgestone plans to invest a total of about €190 million in plant and equipment.

The company’s BIRD (Bridgestone Innovative & Rational Development) production system, which completely automates all the processes of tyre production from material processing to product inspection, will be introduced for the first time in Europe at the new plant.

Plant construction itself will begin in 2006. Scheduled to be operational in 2008, it will have a daily output of 8,000 tyres by the first half of 2009.

In addition to the Hungarian tyre plant, the company announced last month that it is to build another new $300 million plant in the city of Huizhou in China’s Guangdong Province to produce radial tyres for trucks and buses.

That plant, scheduled to begin operation in January 2007, will be the company’s fourth in China. Bridgestone already produces passenger car tyres at plants in Wuxi and Tianjin and truck and bus tyres at a plant in Shenyang.

Bridgestone’s plans call for the plant’s production capacity to reach 5,000 tyres a day in the first half of 2009.