A little over two months ago, Yokohama Tire Corporation (YTC) announced its plan to build a new commercial tire manufacturing plant in West Point, Miss. The company has now made public its selection of Kajima Associates/Architects & Engineers, PC (KA/AEPC) of Atlanta, Ga. to design the first phase of the project – a 931,000-sq.-ft. factory that will include production, warehousing, and operations facilities.
Yokohama will make an investment of $300 million and create approximately 500 jobs as part of the initial phase. Construction is slated for summer 2013, which when completed in October 2015, will provide the factory with a manufacturing capacity of up to one million tires annually.
“We planned for the project to take on a brisk pace and we are extremely pleased it is progressing as scheduled,” said Thomas Masuguchi, YTC’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer. “The demand for Yokohama’s commercial tire products is outpacing our current production capacity and the faster we move along the plant’s timeline, the faster we can increase our supply to meet our dealer requirements. We are confident that Kajima Associates/Architects & Engineers, PC will provide us with design plans for the factory that are aimed at optimum productivity and efficiency.”
“We are honored to have been selected as the design firm,” said Yoshi Koshiyama, KA/AEPC’s design director.
“We look forward to being a partner in translating Yokohama’s strategic vision for their new plant to reality by providing extensive services from Building Information Modeling (BIM) to structural and interior design.”
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