This new state-of-the-art Serbian site is set to produce over 13.6 million Linglong tyres annually.
Europe is about to hear the Linglong name more often now, as shortly after it signed a multi-year agreement to be the official tyre sponsor of Chelsea Football Club last week, the Chinese tyre manufacturer has since also recently inaugurated mass tyre production at its new plant in Serbia.
This new tyre factory of in Linglong’s Zrenjanin, Serbia is to be not just the company’s, but China’s, first tyre manufacturing facility in Europe. The Chinese tyre maker’s roughly €1 billion (RM 4.7 billion) into this production site sees it be one of the biggest greenfield investment into the Baltic country to date, with this particular plant also touted by the company being currently one of the most advanced tyre manufacturing factories in the world.
The Chinese tyre manufacturer further adds that this the state-of-the-art facility integrates advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, mobile sensing, and industrial robots. This Serbian site is said to be capable of producing 13.62 million high-performance radial tires, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic quoting during the inauguration ceremony that this new plant could become the country’s “fifth or sixth-largest exporter”.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who attended the launch alongside Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Li Ming and Linglong Tire Co., Ltd. Chairman Wang Feng, further underlined the economic importance of the project, especially to the city of Zrenjanin and its surrounding regions. This new factory is said to boost the city budget, which will be used fund new infrastructure projects.
“(This factory) not only provides jobs for over 1,200 people now, but we expect that number to grow to 1,835 in the second phase of development,” added the Serbian President during the inauguration ceremony. The factory’s Phase II expansion is apparently already underway, with Linglong previously stating that it plans to invest €580 million (RM 2.7 billion) to further increase annual production at the plant by 1.1 million sets of various high-performance radial tyres.
Incidentally here, this current factory that Linglong first broke ground back in 2019 had already been steadily churning out tyres for trucks since last year. The Serbian site has also been producing passenger car tyres since the beginning of this year too, with the story here essentially being for the company to announce that mass manufacturing of its tyres has begun in earnest.
Linglong currently operates five plants in its home market of China, with plans for apparently two more to come in Tongchuan and Lu’An City. This newly-opened Serbian plant is to be its second global site, after its initial international manufacturing facility in Chonburi, Thailand.
An annual production target of 160 million tyres is currently targeted by Linglong, with it aiming to be placed among the top 5 tyre manufacturers globally by 2030. The Chinese tyre manufacturer is currently looking at plans to open another new site in Mexico, to support its international expansion endeavours.
