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| | | | Yokohama Rubber to Construct Large Proving Ground in Thailand | | | Tokyo - The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that it received an approval for the construction of a large proving ground from Thailand Board of Investment. The construction is for the purpose of upgrading capabilities for evaluating and improving the quality of Yokohama tires for passenger cars, trucks and buses, and the company has already secured a 1.69-million square meter site in Rayong Province, Thailand to complete the ground by the end of March 2009. The planned amount of the total investment in this project is 2.5 billion yen.
For the new proving ground, Yokohama Rubber will construct a high-speed circuit with the total road length of 4.1 kilometers and the longest straight line of 1 kilometer. The company also plans to construct various test courses for the confirmation of driving stability, fuel efficiency, durability, noise, vibration and driving comfort. Rayong Province was chosen because Yokohama Tire Manufacturing (Thailand) Co., Ltd., a tire manufacturer/distributor, is closely located to make it easier to communicate with its manufacturing and development divisions, in addition to immediate availability of large lands in the province.
At present, Yokohama Rubber owns a proving ground in Ibaraki Prefecture and Hokkaido Island in Japan. The Hokkaido ground is specialized in testing winter tires. The addition of the Thai proving ground is aimed at remarkably improving the company’s tire evaluation capability as a whole. At the Thai proving ground, tires made at Yokohama Rubber group’s manufacturing bases in Thailand, Philippines, China, Japan and the United States will be evaluated. |  | |
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