Continental has officially opened its new tyre plant in Camaçari, Brazil, with a ceremony that involved Brazil’s president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Manfred Wennemer, executive board chairman of the tyre maker.
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By the end of 2006, the new plant will be turning out 9,000 car tyres a day; in the first half of 2007 daily output will be increased to 14,000 units.
Production of commercial vehicle tyres will get under way in July, with an estimated daily output of 1,000 tyres by the end of 2006 and up to 1,700 units a day by the end of the coming year. With a capacity of six million car and 700,000 commercial vehicle tyres, the plant in Camaçari will supply mainly the NAFTA region.
“The new low-cost production capacities play a key role in our concept for the future passenger tyre business in the loss making NAFTA region. At the same time, the capacities allow for profitable growth,” said Wennemer.
The new factory, with 500,000m² in floor space, was built on an 800,000m² site in the Camaçari industrial park near Salvador in the Brazilian state of Bahia. Total investment was $US260m. The factory will generate a total of 1,000 jobs directly and 4,900 indirectly. By December the number of employees will climb from 282 at present to 700; the workforce will expand to 900 in the course of 2007.
