Based in Japan, Bridgestone Corporation is the world’s largest tyre and rubber company.
During Tyre Safety Month, Bridgestone has renewed its plea for motorists to take extra care on the roads. It has created a consumer facing campaign to highlight the importance of checking tyres and launched a new online portal that offers tips and advice on correct pressures and tread depths as well as advice for selecting the right tyre.
The Bridgestone factory in Rome, Italy has become the company’s first tyre plant worldwide to achieve International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS certification. The plant gained certification at the beginning of September thanks to its use of bio-circular and circular-based materials. Bridgestone EMIA says it will expand the assessment programme to further European plants from 2023.
FCC TSR Honda France has won the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme Endurance World Championship (EWC) title on Bridgestone’s Battlax tyres. This is the third time a team supplied by Bridgestone has won the world’s foremost series of endurance motorcycle races since 2018. The second placed Yoshimura Sert Motul ranked second in the EWC series, also on Bridgestone tyres. Bridgestone has supplied grippy, durable Battlax tyres to the EWC since 2017. It says this motorsport deal, alongside its other global motorsport partnerships, embodies its commitment to inspire mobility excitement under Bridgestone’s E8 strategy.
Bridgestone has celebrated the diamond anniversary of the very first Bandag operation to join the group. Today Australia’s sole producer of pre-cured retread materials, Bandag, has marked 60 years of local manufacturing, a milestone that Heath Barclay, managing director of Bridgestone Australia & New Zealand, says is “significant for any business, let alone a manufacturing business.”
This month, Mazda Motor UK is debuting its first plug-in hybrid, the “crafted in Japan” Mazda CX-60 crossover. UK customers will receive their CX-60 with Bridgestone or Yokohama tyres as standard. Depending on specification, Mazda will equip the SUV with either the Yokohama Advan V61 in size 235/60R18 103V or Bridgestone Alenza 001 in 235/50 R20 100W.
A new flagship tyre will arrive in Bridgestone’s summer touring line-up next year, and it’s a product that “gives drivers control and confidence in stressful and unforeseen conditions, including on a rainy day.” Introducing the Bridgestone Turanza 6, Bridgestone states that its successor to the Turanza T005 offers best-in-class wet performance as well as superior mileage and improved fuel/energy efficiency.
Through its local subsidiary Bridgestone Do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda, Bridgestone Corporation is once again increasing production capacity at the Bahia passenger car and light truck tyre plant in Brazil. Earlier today, the company said it would invest approximately BRL 270 million (£45.4 million) in this project; when combined with the capacity investment announced in July 2021, total investment in boosting Bahia plant capacity amounts to approximately BRL 970 million (£163.2 million).
With an additional US$42 million investment, Bridgestone Americas plans to commercialise its activities with guayule, a desert shrub that offers an alternative source of natural rubber. The aim is sustainable commercial production of guayule-derived natural rubber by the end of the decade.
Bridgestone Americas will spend US$550 million over the coming two years on the expansion and modernisation of its Warren County truck and bus radial tyre plant in the US state of Tennessee. The project will add 380 jobs to the Warren County workforce and expand the plant’s existing footprint by 850,000 square feet (around 79,000 square metres).
The Firestone Polymer Engineering Pilot Center (PEPC) in Akron, Ohio has become the first Bridgestone facility in North America to gain International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) Plus recognition for sustainable raw material transparency and traceability. PEPC is part of the Bridgestone Americas Technology Center, which serves as a hub for Bridgestone’s entire innovation, research and product development within the Americas region.
Bridgestone has brought its award-winning tyre range to life to scores of onlookers on the first day of the British Motor Show 2022 – and is urging thousands more to come and find out about its premium products over the next three days.
Bridgestone’s newest ultra-high performance tyre, the Potenza Sport offered the best results in wet and dry performance in the latest Auto Express tyre test. The tyre was able to make the most of its home field advantage as the magazine used Bridgestone’s Aprilla proving ground, just besting Goodyear’s Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6 by 0.5 per cent. Another notable result was the third-place finish of the Maxxis Victra Sport 5, which adds to a growing list of test successes proving that the brand is increasingly able to hold its own against the traditional premium brands. The test was conducted on the biggest selling 18” tyre size, 225/40R18 92Y. This UHP tyre test of seven products was split from the “UUHP mini test” of three of the highest-performing road tyre products, won by the new Continental SportContact 7. For the UHP test, Auto Express weighted its results to reflect UK driving needs: wet tests counted for 50 per cent of the final mark, dry 40 per cent, and the remaining 10 per cent on noise, fuel economy and price.
On a global level, Bridgestone has managed to keep its return on sales at a high level in the first half of the year. And the EMIA region is no exception. While Bridgestone EMIA laid the foundations for the turnaround last year after years with return on sales close to or below zero, the Japanese manufacturer generated a return of 8.9 per cent in the second quarter after 9.6 per cent in the first quarter, resulting in a total of 9.2 per cent for the first half of the year (previous year: 4.9 per cent).
Bridgestone sales revenues shot up 24.9 per cent to 1,886 billion yen (£11.632 billion; 13.764 billion euros) in the first half of 2022. However, Bridgestone’s continuing operations figures also show that operating profit dropped 1.4 per cent to 173 billion yen, resulting in 117 billion yen of profit attributable to owners (down 10.5 per cent compared with the same period in 2022). As a result, Bridgestone revised up its full-year revenue forecasts, but revised down its comparable full-year earnings per share estimates by 10 per cent from 397.58 yen per share to 357.93 yen per share.
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