Toyo its expanding research and development capabilities at its North America manufacturing facility, with expansion slated for completion this year.
TNA, the Toyo Tyre Group’s North American tyre manufacturing base (established December 2005), supplies the market with product developed in collaboration with the Tyre Technical Centre, the TTR R&D headquarters in Itami City, Hyogo, Japan.
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Expansion of the local R&D capabilities will involve increasing staff at each stage, from product planning, to product design, to commercialisation.
The plan is to increase by 1.5 times the number of R&D staff, to introduce equipment to measure and evaluate the static and dynamic properties of the tyre.
“Once the TNA R&D expansion is complete in 2017, we will be in a better position to expedite development of both original equipment and replacement tyres that more closely meets customer needs,” noted a Toyo statement.
TNA completed its Phase Four plant expansion in 2016, increasing annual production capacity to 11.5m tyres (calculated for passenger car tyres), and is now the Toyo Group’s largest tyre manufacturing facility.
To further bolster its business focus on North America, TTR has created a North America Business Development Division at its Osaka, Japan headquarters.
