Michelin North America Commits to an Additional $144 Million in Oklahoma

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Michelin North America (Greenville, South Carolina), is currently spending $56 million on expansion work to its plant located in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and has committed an additional $144 million to be spent in Ardmore over the next two years.

As a part of that expenditure, the Ardmore Development Authority is building a 75,000 square foot expansion that will be leased to Michelin on completion. The majority of the money will be spent on a variety of expansion and upgrade projects, possibly including new production lines, throughout the plant, aimed at increasing the plant's capacity for producing larger size tires.

"Increasingly, automakers and the public are demanding larger tires, more high-performance tires, and more SUV tires," said Pete Selleck, chief operating officer of Michelin America Small Tires in an interview with Oklahoma City's 'The Journal Record'.

Michelin currently produces 42,500 tires per day and employs 1,841 at the Ardmore plant. Employing over 130,000 worldwide and producing over 36,000 products, The Michelin Group of companies makes tires for all types of vehicles from bicycles to the space shuttle, including cars, trucks, motorcycles, earthmover equipment, buses, subway trains, and aircraft. The Michelin Group has eighty (80) manufacturing plants on five (5) continents and maintains a business presence in over one hundred and seventy (170) countries. Each day, The Michelin Group produces more then 844,000 tires over a broad product range, more then 61,000 inner tubes, more then four (4) million kilometers of wires, 96,000 wheels, and 75,000 tourist maps and guides.