Bridgestone plans new tyre plant
Bridgestone Group has set aside an investment budget of Bt15 billion to build a new plant at the Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate in Chon Buri province as a centre for tyre production in Asean, said a Thai minister.
"Thailand will be Bridgestone’s production base for car tyres, because the country has [high] quality rubber, which is the main raw material for producing car tyres," said Yuttapong Charasathien, deputy agriculture minister, after visiting Japan last week, where he met with Bridgestone’s management.
He said Bridgestone executives told him that demand for rubber as raw material in tyre production showed strong growth. Bridgestone Group has rubber-tyre plants worldwide, using about 400,000 tonnes of rubber a year. In Thailand it has four plants, which use an average of 100,000 tonnes a year.
On April 29, Bridgestone laid the foundation stone for the group's new plant in Thailand that will produce off-the-road radial tires for construction and mining vehicles (ORRs).The new plant is scheduled to begin production in the first half of 2015, and total production capacity is expected to reach approximately 85 tonnes by the first half of 2019.
The company eventually plans to open two new plants in Thailand to produce truck tyres at Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate. The two new plants will have a technology centre for research and development to support tyre production.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Agriculture Adviser in Tokyo reported that demand for rubber to make tyres by small and medium-sized industries in Japan continued to grow. Most of this demand was being met by rubber suppliers from Indonesia. The office is negotiating with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan to import rubber from Thailand.
"SMEs in Japan will visit and meet with officials from the [Thai] Agriculture Ministry in June to study ways to boost imports of Thai rubber," Yuttapong said.
The price of rubber dropped to Bt87.5 per kilogram recently.
However, Yuttapong said the ministry tried to boost domestic demand for rubber for use in renovating roads. He said about 380,000 tonnes of rubber are needed to renovate 80,000 kilometres of road a year. This should help keep rubber prices stable, he said.
