“The demand for our tires has been growing steadily and dynamically all over Europe,” said Jin-Wook Choi, Hankook Tire Executive Vice-President and COO in Europe.
As a consequence the European plant – Hankook Tire Magyarország Kft. in Rácalmás, 61 km from Budapest, near the Danube – managed to roll its 10 millionth tire off the production line earlier than expected. The South-Korean company hence decided to invest a further 230 million euros into the expansion of the plant to enable the production of 10 million tires a year or more than 30,000 tires a day from 2012. That acceleration means that the number of employees will grow above 1900 from the current 1250.
Hankook Tire has recently partnered with Volkswagen, Audi, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, Opel and Renault. The Hungarian facility already directly supplies tires to the European plants of Hyundai and Volkswagen for the Hyundai i30 and the Volkswagen T5 models.
