Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Mississippi said its new commercial tire plant in West Point, Miss., is nearing completion.
The roughly one-million-square-foot factory is on target to begin production in October 2015, with many of its key milestones involving construction, equipment installation and job recruitment achieved on schedule, according to Yokohama.
“We’ve come a long way since we broke ground in September 2013,” said Alan Easome, Yokohama Corp. of North America senior director of new plant development. “We outlined an aggressive plan to have a plant come on line in under 24 months, and now we are that much closer to serving our customers with expanded production capacity right here in the U.S.”
Among the milestones achieved are the opening of Yokohama Boulevard, a $20 million, four-mile road that will serve as a major thoroughfare in moving materials and products to and from the plant; substantial completion of the main production building; and installation of equipment, with manufacturing processes, such as rubber mixing, initiated for testing purposes.
The company has recruited 170 employees to date and expects to fill nearly 300 of the 500 jobs projected by the end of the year.
Yokohama invested an initial $300 million in the first phase of the facility, which is expected to produce up to 1 million tires annually. In addition to production, the 500-acre parcel of land will house warehousing and operations facilities.
