Mexico's tire industry is developing rapidly, and the country is becoming one of the top five tire manufacturing countries in the world.
Three projects disclosed in the past six months: Yokohama Rubber, Sailun Group and Zhongce Rubber represent more than $1 billion in capital investment and more than 24 million passenger car/light truck tires per year. These new plants are an important complement to the other three plants opened by Goodyear, Michelin and Pirelli in the past decade, and Mexico has also become a major trading partner for the U.S. tire industry.
According to relevant data, the current annual production capacity of the Mexican tire industry exceeds 65 million passenger car/light truck tires and 1 million to 2 million truck and bus tires. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the new capacity under construction represents an increase of more than 35% in Mexico’s passenger car tire production capacity. In other words, Mexico's tire production capacity is expected to exceed 100 million tires in the next few years.
Mexico is already the second-largest source of passenger car tires imported to the U.S. and the fifth-largest source of light truck tires exported to the U.S. In 2023, the U.S. imported 22.8 million passenger car tires and 1.79 million light truck tires from Mexico, valued at more than $2 billion.
Once the factories of the three newly invested tire manufacturers are put into production, the industry expects that most of their production will be exported to the United States, which could push U.S. imports from Mexico to 40 million pieces.
All three companies planning to build new plants in Mexico stressed the convenience of Mexico as a manufacturing base to help them serve their U.S. trading networks.
In the past few years, Sailun has mainly supplied products to the U.S. market from its factories in Vietnam and Cambodia. TBC is the exclusive distributor of Sailun tires in the U.S. market.
Yokohama has been eyeing Mexico as a potential manufacturing base since 2016. North America accounted for 26%, or $1.62 billion, of Yokohama's global tire-related sales revenue.
Similarly, for Zhongce Rubber, the opening of a plant in Mexico will benefit the North American and Latin American markets. The plant will build a warehouse center that will enhance logistics and services, ensuring the company can deliver products faster and more reliably to customers across the Americas.
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