Where Are Yokohama Tires Made & Who Owns The Company?

Although not as big as the top-tier tire brands such as Michelin, Goodyear, and Continental, Yokohama Tire is still a notable name and, in fact, one of the major tire brands of 2025. In its home country, Japan, Yokohama Tire is the third top-performing tire brand after Sumitomo and Bridgestone, based on the latest available sales data from 2021 and 2022.

For the United States market, Yokohama manufactures passenger car tires at its two facilities located in Salem, Virginia, and West Point, Mississippi. The company also has a separate research and development center in Cornelius, North Carolina, for designing and innovating its tire products. The Salem plant is responsible for producing Yokohama's Geolandar and Avid series tires for passenger cars and light trucks in the country. On the other hand, the West Point plant focuses on manufacturing tires for commercial trucks.

Since the U.S. is a large market, Yokohama also imports additional supplies of its Geolandar tires from its other global manufacturing facilities. Some of it comes from its homeland, where it has eight plants dedicated to producing tires. Its manufacturing plants in China, specifically in Suzhou and Hangzhou, also contribute to the supply of Geolandar tires in the U.S. Yokohama's other Asian production plants, located in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, also produce large volumes of tires for overseas markets, including North America.

Yokohama Tire Corporation is a subsidiary of the Japan-based Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. for the North American market. It was founded in 1969 when the Japanese manufacturer decided to expand its business to the U.S. in an effort to become a global leader in the tire industry. The parent company was established in 1917 and was the first Japanese tire maker to earn ISO 9001 certification for consistently delivering high-quality products and services.

Historically, Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. was formed through a joint venture between Furukawa Electric Co. (formerly Yokohama Electric Cable Manufacturing Company) and the American brand BFGoodrich. Originally named Yokohama Rubber Manufacturing Co., Ltd., the company's first manufacturing plant was built in 1920 in Hiranuma-cho, Yokohama, Japan. However, the plant was completely destroyed three years into its operation during the Great Kanto Earthquake. It took six years before another facility was completed in a different part of Yokohama.

Between 1950 and 1970, Yokohama worked on expanding its reach by building facilities and offices in other parts of its home country and beyond. This paved the way for the company to establish a presence in overseas markets like China, Singapore, Taiwan, and the U.S. It's worth noting that in 1963, it formally changed its name to Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. The move was seemingly a precedent to BFGoodrich — famous for its all-terrain tires — finally selling its majority shares to Japanese firms in 1981, making Yokohama an entirely Japanese-owned and operated company.

Yokohama Rubber performed impressively in the previous year, with the company disclosing that its first-half sales revenue for 2024 increased 18.5% ($3.6 billion) year-over-year. Its business profit also saw a 113.4% jump ($379 million), while its operating profit recorded a 99.6% increase ($390 million). In the second half, the company continued its double-digit gains, with annual sales reaching an 11% year-over-year hike ($6.95 billion). Business profit earned a 35.6% increment ($853.2 million), while operating profit recorded an 18.7% increase ($792.63 million).

The company does not publicly disclose financial reports from its North American arm. However, a filing with the Department of Employment and Workforce recently revealed that it is permanently shutting down its facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, come April 2025. The closure will affect the 90 employees of the plant, which primarily produces Yokohama's agricultural tires under the Trelleborg brand. Aside from the Spartanburg facility and the two other U.S. plants, which focus on consumer tires for passenger cars, the company has another production line in Charles City, Iowa, which makes tires for agricultural and industrial equipment.

According to Yokohama Tire, it has 2,100 employees in the U.S., but most of them work for its R&D center and manufacturing facilities in Salem and West Point. Its parent company is currently not so optimistic about 2025, as it is carefully anticipating the effects of the new trade policies and measures of overseas markets, including those of the U.S. As such, it has implemented a three-year management plan for 2024 through 2026.