Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd. is pleased to announce that we have decided to increase production capacity for passenger car and light truck tires at our group's factory in the United States from its current capacity of 5,000 tires per day to 10,000 tires per day by the end of 2019. With this move, we will enhance our ability to produce tires locally for the North American market, focusing especially on expanding local production of SUV tires, which are in particularly high demand in North America. By increasing our proportion of locally produced tires and cutting sales lead times, we aim to expand our overall tire sales in North America. Toward this end, our group is moving forward with plans to invest a total of 87 million dollars (approx. 9 billion yen*) on factory upgrades to increase production capacity and productivity.
The dissolution of our longstanding Global Alliance with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in October of 2015 has given the Sumitomo Rubber Group a much greater degree of freedom to conduct our business in North America. Thus, having considered various measures to enhance our productivity and expand sales in the region, we have decided to invest in increasing production at our factory in the United States. Our US factory currently produces tires for passenger cars and light trucks, trucks and buses and motorcycles, and we plan to focus this latest round of investment on increasing the factory's capacity to produce tires for passenger cars and light trucks from its current capacity of 5,000 tires per day to 10,000 tires per day by the end of 2019. Thus, our group is planning to invest a total of 87 million dollars (approx. 9 billion yen) over the next four years on factory upgrades to increase production capacity, productivity and more.
We have already begun the partial transfer of production of tires for the North American market from our group's Thailand Factory to our local factory in the United States. In the future, as part of our efforts to expand sales in the North American market, we plan to continue moving forward with expanding local production for local consumption in order to reduce sales lead times while enhancing our ability to supply high-performance SUV tires, environmentally friendly fuel-efficient tires and other high-value-added tires to customers in North America.
*Exchange Rate: 1 USD = 103 Yen
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