Early next week, Continental Tire the Americas will formally announce plans to build a $1.45 billion “commercial vehicle tire” plant on a site in Hinds County, Mississippi, just west of the state capital of Jackson.
An extraordinary meeting of the Mississippi State Legislature hosted yesterday morning cleared a series of economic development issues tied to the planned tire plant.
Word of the plant came out earlier this week when the Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion Ledger reported on the plan. Yesterday a spokesperson with Continental confirmed to Tire Review that the tiremaker would announce the plant next week.
CTA has two plants in the U.S., a consumer tire plant in Sumter, S.C., that opened two years ago, and its long-standing plant in Mt. Vernon, Ill., which produce both consumer and medium truck tires. “Commercial vehicle tire” could mean anything from additional medium truck tire capacity to OTR tires, a market that Continental plans to re-enter in North America.
Conti exited the North American OTR market in 2006 when it sold that business to Titan International. The deal included an OTR tire plant in Bryan, Ohio, that was originally built in 1967 by the General Tire & Rubber Co.
The Clarion Ledger claims to have known about the Conti project since late 2014, but “agreed to not publish anything until negotiations were complete so as not to threaten the deal.”
The Continental tire plant site is said to be a 640-acre parcel along I-20 between the towns of Clinton and Bolton, west of Jackson.
