Goodyear to End Production at Tire Plant in Quebec Next Month

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Reported by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Following the ongoing global strategy to reduce excess high cost manufacturing capacity, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (Akron, Ohio), announced early this year the decision to discontinue tire production at its facility in Valleyfield, Quebec. Production is scheduled to end on March 31, 2007. However, the facility will be used as a materials mixing center by the end of the second quarter.

There are an estimated 1,000 employees, both hourly and salaried, at the facility and the change will cost about 800 jobs; leaving only 200 employees for the mixing center once operational.

Company officials outlined increasingly intense competition and the global business environment as major reasons for such decisions that will enable the company to be more competitive. According to Goodyear, the Valleyfield announcement yields a total of $125 million in projected annual savings with the already announced closures of tire plants in Washington, United Kingdom; Upper Hutt, New Zealand and Tyler, Texas.

Data extracted from industrial Info’s online database shows the Valleyfield plant among nine Goodyear plants located in Canada, 34 plants in the U.S. and one in Mexico. Recently, Industrial Info has reported on over $384 million in capital and maintenance expenditures at Goodyear plants in the U.S. and Canada.

Goodyear is one of the world’s largest tire companies. The company manufactures tires, engineered rubber products and chemicals in more than 100 facilities in 29 countries around the world. Goodyear employs about 80,000 people worldwide.

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