Bridgestone Corp. (TYO:5108) CEO and Chairman Masaaki Tsuya recently offered his perspective on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Speaking at a press conference held on Dec. 5, Tsuya said that these moves could in the near term have a positive effect on tires and...
Demand for commercial winter tires in Japan is expected to be largely the same as that seen in 2015, according to the mid-year review of domestic tire demand for 2016 published by the Japan Automobile Tyre Manufacturers Association (JATMA) in July. The review projects a 100 percent year-on-year equivalent on four-wheel vehicle tires, at approximately 23.2 million units. Of these,...
Bridgestone Corp. (TYO:5108) will supply Potenza tires to Mazda Motor Corp. (TYO:7261) as original equipment tires for the Roadster RF, for which Mazda started taking orders in November. The Potenza S001 – the model being supplied as original equipment tires to the Roadster RF – is instrumental in the vehicle realizing its features of superior handling, stability and maneuverability. Many...
Bridgestone Corp. (TYO:5108) will be implementing its cutting-edge tire assembly system, “Examation,” at the company’s passenger car tire plant in Tatabanya, Hungary. Tatabanya Plant is scheduled to introduce the system before year’s end, making it Bridgestone’s second to do so, following the company’s flagship Hikone Plant. The state-of-the-art Examation system combines Bridgestone’s proprietary information and communication technologies (ICT) with artificial...
Bridgestone Corp. (TYO:5108) will be increasing manufacturing capacity of aircraft radial tires at the company’s Kurume Plant, Fukuoka Prefecture. The move comes in response to the strong medium-to-long-term demand projected for these tires. The production capacity increase will bring aircraft radial tire production up 1.5 times of that currently at Kurume Plant. With a total investment of 2.1 billion yen...
In a recent interview, Japan Rubber Weekly sat down with Bridgestone Tire Japan Co. Ltd.’s Katsunori Nakamura, production-goods marketing director, and Shinichi Ito, sales planning director, to talk about the current situation regarding retread tire sales for trucks. Outlook for retread tire business Since Bridgestone Tire Japan’s acquisition of Bandag Inc., the leading retread tire manufacturer in the U.S., in...
