Bridgestone Americas Inc. is celebrating its expanded capabilities in Graniteville with the opening of its $1 billion-plus radial OTR tyre plant and an ongoing capacity increase to its existing passenger tyre facility, both located in Aiken County, S.C.
“I’m really excited,” said Ron Brooks, manager of the radial OTR plant. “It’s a brand new facility on 550 acres. It’s a U.S.- certified wildlife habitat area and the campus is absolutely beautiful. Any time you’re involved in a new start-up, the people are energetic and it’s exciting to be around them.”
The 1.6 million-sq.-ft. plant opens today with a projected daily capacity of 39.5 metric tons of raw rubber processing and 375 employees.
“It’s going to be a beautiful facility for our customers to see and I think they’re going to be really impressed with it.”
Bridgestone also completed the addition of a new warehouse to its nearby passenger tyre plant and will continue to install equipment in the 2.4 million-sq.-ft. building until it is producing 37,750 tyres per day by year-end 2015, Plant Manager Fran Jones said, up from 33,000 currently.
Ms. Jones said the firm is adding six more tyre building machines and some curing presses to complete the expansion process. The facility employs 1,340 and projects to reach 1,453 when the expansion is complete.
The expansion added 740,000 square feet to the building. Bridgestone invested $200 million with $26 million invested in the added warehouse capacity. The total investment in the car tyre plant since it opened in 1998 has been $683 million.
“The amount of jobs we add to the community is tremendous,” Ms. Jones said. “The community is so grateful to have good paying jobs for our folks here to work with.”
Mr. Brooks said the OTR tyre plant will expand up to 130 raw rubber tons per day by early 2017, with employment projected to grow to 550. The construction phase of the two-phase expansion is projected to be complete in April 2015.
Once the construction is finished, the firm will equip the expanded portion with the necessary equipment.
Graniteville is Bridgestone’s first radial OTR tyre plant outside of Japan, in Kitakyushu and Shimonoseki, although the firm has a fourth plant, in Rayong, Thailand, under construction. That $615 million project is slated to start production in the first half of 2015.
“The decision was made a few years ago based on future market forecasts,” he said. “We were built to respond to that forecast and we’re just now beginning production. We’ll be in our qualification stage all the way through the end of 2016, which means we’ll be qualifying different sizes to meet that different market demand.”
The facility opens running just one size, but plans to grow to four with various tread patterns and rim diameters ranging from 49 to 63 inches.
Mr. Brooks brings more than 40 years of experience to the OTR plant, which is the third start-up he’s been involved in. He’s managed three other Bridgestone plants: its bias-ply OTR tyre plant in Bloomington, Ill.; the truck/bus and passenger radial tyre plant in LaVergne, Tenn.; and the truck and bus radial tyre unit in Warren County, Tenn.
“I’m never too old to learn,” Mr. Brooks said. “Every plant brings new people and people change a bit, so you just adjust.”
Success spurs addition
Mr. Brooks said Aiken County was the logical choice for the new plant because of the success the firm has had with its car tyre plant. The relationships with the local community and government agencies were already in place, making the transition easy.
Bridgestone looked at a variety of factors when considering sites for its plant, he said, the main ones being availability of utilities, the local labor pool, whether or not it can attract the technical resources it needs, what colleges and universities are nearby and how favorable states are in their relationships with businesses.
The plants are located off Route 20 just about two hours away from the Port of Charleston, which Mr. Brooks said will be used to export some of the plant’s output overseas.
“South Carolina meets all of our needs,” he said. “We had already developed a strong community relationship and a strong state relationship. Those things that normally take time to learn and develop and culture were already here.
Mr. Brooks lauded South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, saying, “I think she’s made it very inviting and she is very progressive in recruiting new business to South Carolina. They also have a strong commissioner of commerce in Bobby Hitt. Her whole staff has been great to work with.”
One way the state makes it inviting for businesses is through its ReadySC program, which is a technical work force training program. Brooks said the program helped Bridgestone with pre-screening efforts and aids in training and development of employees.
“This state has done a lot to encourage new businesses to locate here,” said Ms. Jones, who helped with the start-up of the OTR plant since 2011 until she took over her current position in April.
“It’s a very business-friendly state and a place where the business community wants the jobs here, so they work very closely with us.”