Yokohama will unite all its industrial tire divisions

Yokohama Rubber is consolidating its Industrial Tire businesses to leverage brand influence and growth potential.

Yokohama will merge its subsidiary Alliance Tire Group (ATG) with its own industrial tire business into a new business unit called Yokohama Off-Highway Tires. Yokohama Rubber bought ATG in 2016, spending $ 1.18 billion on an agricultural and industrial tire manufacturer with factories in India and Israel.

The new Yokohama Off-Highway Tires will have a global presence with global offices in Tokyo, Boston, Amsterdam and Mumbai.

As the first phase of consolidation, Yokohama's US industrial tire business will be merged with Alliance Tire Americas (ATA) in early 2021. Yokohama Off-Highway Tires America will be based at ATA headquarters in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and will be headed by current ATA president Dhaval Nanavati.

Plans for further integration are nearing completion and will be announced shortly.

Consolidating the business in this segment, Yokohama Rubber claims, will strengthen the Yokohama brand, increase the company's product line diversity and contribute to "superior price competitiveness." A single global company will offer a full range of industrial tires - from small forklift tires to extra-large radial tires for construction, industrial, agricultural and forestry equipment.

In 2019, the ATG Yokohama industrial tire segment, represented by the Alliance, Galaxy and Primex brands, had sales of $ 660 million. For the first half of 2020, ATG's sales revenue fell 19.3% to $ 278.5 million, reflecting the negative impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on global demand. Also, part of the sales of industrial tires comes from the Japanese company Aichi Tire Industry, which was bought by Yokohama in 2017 and is part of its tire division.

ATG owns three tire factories - in Hadera (Israel) and in Tirunelveli and Dahej (India). In addition, Yokohama Rubber recently announced plans to build a third industrial tire plant in India. The $ 165 million project will be implemented in the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh.