Yokohama Rubber to build new plant in Batam

By Alexander Ginting

Japanese firm The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. announced Thursday it will build a new plant for manufacturing pneumatic marine fenders and marine hoses on Batam Island.

The 3 billion yen plant for material mixing, moulding and vulcanization will begin operation from June 2015. At present, the company is manufacturing these products at its plant in Japan. When completed, the new Batam plant will become the second production site, increasing the company's total production capacity for those products to approximately 1.5 times from now.

Yokohama Rubber pneumatic marine fenders and marine hoses are mainly used in the handling and transferring of crude oil at sea.

Yokohama Rubber is a leading manufacturer of such products. In terms of global market share, Yokohama Rubber is ranked as No. 1 in pneumatic marine fenders and No. 2 in marine hoses.

Yokohama Rubber plans to increase its market share and has been studying the construction of a new overseas production base with superior cost competitiveness. The company chose Batam as the new plant's location, only 20 kilometers from Singapore, the largest hub port in Asia, allowing superiority in terms of international distribution.

Yokohama Rubber will start constructing the plant after establishing PT. Yokohama Industrial Products Manufacturing Indonesia, as a manufacturing company with a capital of 1 billion yen by the end of this year. While the new plant will be constructed on a 50,000 square meter land, Yokohama Rubber plans to expand the production site to adjacent land for possible expansion in the future.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak