Japan-based Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd. will increase production capacity for passenger car and light truck tires at its U.S. manufacturing plant in Tonawanda, New York. The plant's current capacity of 5,000 tires per day will increase to 10,000 tires per day by the end of 2019. Sumitomo plans to invest a total of $87 million dollars on factory upgrades to increase production capacity and productivity.

According to company officials, “with this move, we will enhance our ability to produce tires locally for the North American market, focusing especially on expanding local production of SUV tires, which are in particularly high demand in North America. By increasing our proportion of locally produced tires and cutting sales lead times, we aim to expand our overall tire sales in North America.”

“The dissolution of our longstanding Global Alliance with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in October of 2015 has given the Sumitomo Rubber Group a much greater degree of freedom to conduct our business in North America,” officials explained. “Thus, having considered various measures to enhance our productivity and expand sales in the region, we have decided to invest in increasing production at our factory in the United States. Our US factory currently produces tires for passenger cars and light trucks, trucks and buses and motorcycles.”

A company spokesperson said “We have already begun the partial transfer of production of tires for the North American market from our group's Thailand Factory to our local factory in the United States. In the future, as part of our efforts to expand sales in the North American market, we plan to continue moving forward with expanding local production for local consumption in order to reduce sales lead times while enhancing our ability to supply high-performance SUV tires, environmentally friendly fuel-efficient tires and other high-value-added tires to customers in North America.”