JK Tyre & Industries Ltd., has unveiled a ‘JK Tyre Steel Wheels’ centre in Farrukhnagar, Haryana as part of the company’s focused expansion into rural India. The retail expansion forms part of JK Tyre’s strategic vision to strengthen its last-mile presence and tap into what the company describes as “India’s rapidly growing rural and semi-urban demand”.
Netherlands-based Heuver Tyres has completed the construction of its new warehouse in Hardenberg. With this 16,000 m² expansion, the wholesaler now has a total storage capacity of no less than 61,000 m² at its headquarters site. This enables Heuver to offer its customers an even wider range of stock, in addition to serving customers even faster and more efficiently.
On 7 March, Formula One Autocentres announced that it had opened a new location in Burnley. Alongside our tyres and car servicing the Burnley centre offers “exhausts, batteries, brakes, suspension, clutches, air conditioning, puncture repair and wheel alignment”. The latest opening means Formula one now has a total of 133 centres across the UK. Across all those branches, Formula One Autocentres reports that it fits half a million tyres a year.
Part of Linglong’s Lu’an tyre factory project commenced construction on 7 March. According to the project’s builder, Anhui Zhongqing Construction Group, the part that started construction is the living area and related supporting projects. Zhongqing Construction Group said, “This highly anticipated project has officially entered the construction stage”.
On 22 February, Yanggu Huatai held a groundbreaking ceremony for its Thailand factory. The factory is scheduled for production in the first quarter of 2026. After reaching full capacity, it will be able to produce 30,000 tons of high-performance rubber additives per year, including 10,000 tons of rubber protective wax, 10,000 tons of rubber processing aids and 10,000 tons of high-performance silane coupling agents.
Following the news in September 2024 that HiQ Tyres & Autocare and Carsa are cooperating, they are expanding their strategic partnership with the opening of two new autocare centres in Greater Manchester and Leicestershire. The two new centres in Bolton and Mountsorrel aren’t the end of it either, with more locations “already in the pipeline”.
Oak Tyres confirmed is move into a large new warehouse in Warrington, the company’s seventh according to CEO Peter Cross. At the end of 2024, Warrington Borough Council confirmed it had received a planning application seeking advertisement consent for two fascia signs – which, incidentally, will be Davanti brand focused. These are planned for the main northern elevation of the existing warehouse building at plot 9000, Lingley Mere Business Park.
The third phase of the Guizhou Tyre Vietnam Factory project started on 25 November 2024. Nguyen Van Yong, chairman of the People’s Committee of Tien Giang Province, Vietnam, and Hu Zhongxiong, Secretary of the Guiyang Municipal Party Committee, attended the groundbreaking ceremony. The third phase of the Vietnam tyre manufacturing centre has a designed annual production capacity of 6 million semi-steel radial tyres.
Bridgestone Corporation is investing to expand capacity at three of its passenger car tyre production facilities in Japan. With a total investment of approximately 27 billion yen (£139.1 million) in the Hikone, Tosu and Tochigi plants, the company will boost capacity for Enliten and larger rim diameter tyres. Bridgestone will lift overall production capacity by around 3,000 tyres a day, mainly in the 20-inch and larger size category where the company anticipates growing demand. It will start work on the project early in 2025 and plans to complete it by the end of 2028.
Meghna Innova Rubber Company, the company behind Bangladeshi tyre brand MTF Tyre, has expanded its activities into the truck and bus tyre and agricultural tyre segments. Local newspaper The Business Standard writes that the Meghna Group subsidiary has invested BDT13 billion (£85.3 million) into the project, with 80 per cent of the investment going towards new tyre building machinery.
GSF Car Parts is reporting 20 per cent year-on-year revenue growth, outperforming a buoyant aftermarket sector. Indeed, data from Factor Sales suggests strong growth across the wider aftermarket car parts segment, with the sector up 6.5 per cent year-on-year growth for September, continuing a pattern that has seen eight out of nine months in 2024 trading ahead of 2023. One explanation is that the growth of the car parts market indicates that consumers are holding on to their existing cars for longer, driving demand for repairs and replacement parts.
Car parts distributor GSF Car Parts has announced the opening of two new branches in Ruislip and Stockton. These new branches bring the total number of GSF locations closer to 200, following a series of openings over the past few months.
Linglong is investing $645 million (about £506 million; 591 million) in order to expand the company’s Serbian tyre capacity, build a photovoltaic power station and even add a retreading and recycling wing. According to our Chinese-language sister site, the expansion project is scheduled to start in January 2025 and be completed and put into use at the end of December 2030.
Bush Tyres (B.A. Bush & Son Limited) has signed a 10-year lease on an industrial unit in Wakefield, as the firm gears up for further expansion across the North of England. The news comes just three months after Bush Tyres opened its first branch in the city.
Jiangsu General said the Thailand plant’s construction project (Phase II) has been modified. Specifically, the tyre manufacturer has increased the production capacity of semi-steel radial tyres at overseas bases and cancelled the plan to expand the production capacity of full-steel radial tyres.
If you would like the latest news from the Chinese tyre industry in Chinese, visit our partner site TyrepressChina.com. Or click below to continue on Tyrepress.
