China

Sailun Group was established in 2002 in the National Economic and Technological Development Zone in Qingdao, China and began producing their tye brand under the same name, Sailun Tyre. Now, with a well-known brand name, the company is the 12th largest tyre manufacturer in the world according to Tyrepress Global Manufacturer Rankings, the 11th most valuable tyre brand globally, as well as the fastest grown tyre brand according to the most recent Brand Finance report. Sailun manufactures and distributes tyres of diverse kinds – from passenger car tyres to light truck/SUV tyres to winter, commercial van and medium radial truck tyres – across markets in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Alongside tyre manufacturing, Sailun is engaged in building the most advanced and cost-effective tyre building platforms for tyre manufacturing. Sailun operates four tyre factories. Three of these are in China (located in Qingdao, Shenyang and Dongying) and the fourth, which is in Vietnam, is now producing its first wave of truck tyres. This equates to total production capacity of 37 million passenger car tyres per annum as well as 9 million truck tyres and 119,000 OTR tyres. The Qingdao factory covers some 40,000m2 and has capacity for 10 million car tyres a year. Truck tyre capacity in Qingdao totals around 2.6 million. To this a further 82,144 OTR tyres a year can be added. Sailun’s Shenyang factory comes in roughly 5 per cent smaller than the Qingdao plant at 380,000m2. This production line focuses solely on truck and bus radials and has the capacity to produce 1.8 million truck tyres a year. In Dongying Sailun’s Dawang and Guangrao product lines cover some 300,000m2. Here capacity equates to 18.7 million car tyres a year plus 3.35 million truck tyres annually. A further 8.5 million car tyres and 1.2 million truck tyres, not to mention almost 37 off-the-road tyres are produced in Sailun’s Vietnam factory. However, when you consider that – at 600,000m2 – the Vietnam location has a total area almost 50 per cent larger than the firm’s home Qingdao production base, it is clear that there is potential for much more production in Vietnam.

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