Giti planning to reinvigorate GT Radial brand in North America

RICHBURG, S.C.—As the new kid in the North American manufacturing neighborhood, Giti Tire Manufacturing (USA) Ltd. has ambitious plans to make its mark in the regional tire market.

Since the groundbreaking four years ago for its 1.7-million-sq.-ft. facility in Richburg, the subsidiary of Singapore-headquartered Giti Tire Group began producing tires in late 2017, hired more than 700 employees and has been ramping up production for new lines of tires.

"This facility is half of what we want," said Hank Eisenga, vice president of manufacturing. "So our intent is to take and double this facility as quickly as we can."

The plant, Giti's most state-of-the-art facility, is producing about 8,000 tires per day with a capacity for 10 million tires per year.

"Our intention is to get there as quickly as we can," he added.

The plant began by producing Dextero-brand passenger car tires for Walmart Inc. stores and now also is producing the newly introduced GT Radial Maxtour LX for CUVs and cars.

"We have plans over the next five years to introduce new products every year out of this plant," Giti North America CEO Tim Fulton said during a media tour of the plant in March.

"We'll use the manufacturing capabilities of this plant as the principal source for our U.S. products, complemented by the factory in Indonesia to provide the full range of sizes."

Giti plans to introduce three product lines in 2019 to help it build the GT Radial brand:

The Maxtour LX focuses on the grand touring segments—passenger cars with high-speed ratings and larger rim diameters, as well as a heavy focus on CUVs.

The Adventuro HT will be launched this summer. The plant has started manufacturing some sizes of the LT/SUV tire, while other sizes will be built in the P.T. Gajah Tunggal plant in Indonesia.

The Maxmiler Pro commercial tire is being delivered to distribution centers under a soft launch. Limited sizes of this line will be built in Indonesia to cater to what Giti called an underserved segment of the market.

"We are in the early stages of rebuilding the GT Radial brand. The last three years have impacted us severely in our ability to supply tires to our dealers," said Jim Mayfield, senior executive vice president of sales and marketing, referring to increased U.S. tariffs and antidumping duties imposed on tires imported from its China plants.

"Those days are over. The company has figured out what our go-forward strategy is and it's time to start connecting to consumers again and bringing them the message of some great tires that we're going to be bringing to market and selling. We're going to utilize social media in a very strong way to make that connection," he said.

According to Giti, the new Maxtour LX is priced lower than its benchmarked brand competition: Continental, Cooper, Nexen and Hankook.

"The reality of the market today is that our brand is not well known.

And most of these brands have much higher recognition. So we know we have to rebuild it," Mayfield said. "And the way we're going to do it, we're going to provide a great value for our dealer customers to be able to make money selling the tire, and then it's going to be sold in the marketplace at a great value to the consumer.

"So we get our tires into the market, consumers experience them and, over time, we'll be able to build the brand the way we need to. As we launch our Adventuro HT, as we launch other GT Radial products, new and exciting products, we'll build this brand the way we believe it can be built," Mayfield said.

Automated production

The highly automated equipment in Giti's state-of-the-art plant enables improved accuracy in mixing the compounds and assembling the components, said Phang Wai Yeen, Giti's executive director of international research and development centers.

"At the end of the day, the final part of the components, the final part of the performance actually comes from the accuracy of the components, the accuracy of how we actually put the tire through the whole process. ... It is what we call the enabler of the engineer's dream," Phang said, adding, "You need a state-of-the-art plant where the tire can actually be replicated exactly the way it was designed."

Even though the plant is highly automated, it still depends on human workers to oversee the operations, according to Phang.

"It's not so simple, even though it's automated," he said. "(The tire builder's) eyes are always on the tire, making sure the machine is actually doing exactly what it is supposed to do. ... It is a skill. That's why craftsmanship remains the all-important element in tire manufacturing."

After the tires are transported through the automated building and curing processes, workers visually inspect them at the end of the line before they go to the adjacent warehouse.

The warehouse is stocked with thousands of Maxtour XL tires ready for distribution to North American tire dealerships.

Global R&D

As part of its strategy, Giti relocated its North American R&D center, responsible for developing products specifically for the North American market, from Akron to a building next door to the new tire plant.

This center is linked online with Giti's other R&D centers in Indonesia, China, Germany and the United Kingdom so they can share information and research, Phang said.

"So you can say it is local (development), but it is global. The structure is global," he said.

"With the R&D here, it is listening to the market. The local team, they grew up here, they live here, they know exactly what is needed, he said. "It will enable the faster deployment of the products.

"So effectively, we have what we call a global technology platform, with local deployment. And local deployment means local deployment of the design, local industrialization in the nearest factory in the market."

Production capacity is shared among Giti's eight plants in China, the U.S. and Indonesia, so capacity is used where it makes the most sense, he said.

While the U.S. plant will manufacture a significant amount of tires for North America, Giti still will import some product and certain sizes to meet demand the U.S. plant cannot fulfill currently and because certain facilities are designed to be more efficient in producing certain products and sizes, Giti officials said.

"There are not that many tire companies in the world that have that capability, so we're trying to compete with those global players," Fulton said. "You've got a hundred tire companies but probably 85 or 90 of those don't have that capability."

Giti is the 11th largest tire manufacturer globally, based on Tire Business, rankings.

"We're amongst that very top tier that has that global footprint, global R&D capability, global technology platform and distributing and manufacturing in three different countries. It's a big advantage that you have to be able to optimize your global footprint," Fulton said.

The plants in China, the U.S. and Indonesia are interlinked, which speeds up the processes and troubleshooting of any problems that arise, he said.

"This is one of the benefits of why we feel that this is going to propel the organization's penetration and participation in the U.S. because we are now actually pretty complete," Fulton said.