Tokyo (May 14, 2010) - Bridgestone Corporation announced today that its subsidiary in Indonesia, P.T. Bridgestone Tire Indonesia, will invest approximately ¥4.3 billion to expand production capacity of both passenger car radial tires (“PSR”) and light truck radial tires (“LTR”) at its Karawang Plant. As the result of this expansion project, daily production capacity is projected to increase by 3,000 units to a total of 29,400 units at the Karawang Plant by the first half of 2012.
The Karawang Plant began production in 1999, supplying PSR and LTR tires to both the domestic market and key overseas markets, including North America and Europe. The Karawang plant is already undergoing an expansion project which was announced in August 2007 to increase its daily production capacity by 8,400 units. That project is scheduled to be completed this year. However, with global demand expected to continue growing, the Bridgestone Group determined that further expansion of the plant is necessary to meet market demands.
As this investment shows, the Bridgestone Group is well positioned to respond to rapidly changing market trends and will continue to build or expand production facilities on a global basis that will produce world-class quality tires to satisfy worldwide demand.