Yokohama Expands Plant to Boost Rubber Sector

The investment of $640 million in Yokohama Tire Philippines is expected to boost growth in the rubber industry in Philippine.

“Yokohama is expanding their local production to 50,000 tires a day by 2017… This is a very good market our local rubber industry,” said Trade Undersecretary Merly M. Cruz.

The Yokohama Tire Philippines is located in the Clark Freeport Zone and currently manufactures 21,000 tires daily. At present only 6% of raw materials are sourced locally, but the company plans to increase the share to 50% by 2017. The company aims at improving capacity of its industry partners to build quality products, being encouraged by the government which plans a 40% increase in the local rubber industry in the following 4 years.

“At present, we have about 306,000 hectares of rubber plantation,” Ms. Cruz said.

The Trade department’s P700-million support program also targets the rubber industry and is expected to offer microfinance, shared processing facilities, and capacity building training to MSME clusters.
Yokohama opened the plant in Clark, Pampanga in 1996, which produces tires for passenger cars and sports utility vehicles with internal diameters of 13 to 18 inches.

Source: http://www.inautonews.com/yokohama-expands-plant-to-boost-rubber-sector