Market frenzy: In less than 20 days, 110 million tires have flooded the market
2025 has just passed more than 20 days, and 10 Chinese tire companies have made full efforts in Shandong, Jiangsu and Cambodia respectively - 20 days, 50 billion tire investment is already on the verge of a bowstring.
Shandong's 6 major projects have invested more than 30 billion, and more than 60 million production capacities have benefited
On January 16, 2025, the Zaozhuang Municipal Natural Resources and Planning Bureau website made a pre-approval announcement of the "High-Performance Semi-Steel Radial Tire Efficiency Improvement Technology Transformation Project" of Shandong Fengyuan Tire Manufacturing Co., Ltd. The project includes the finished product warehouse B17782.95 square meters and the R&D laboratory workshop of 1521.43 square meters.
This efficiency improvement technology transformation is likely to be related to Fengyuan Tire's product portfolio optimization strategy in recent years. In 2024, Fengyuan Tire's sales ratio of 17 inches and above tires has been adjusted to more than 42%. In fact, more than one global leading tire company has achieved profit growth by increasing the sales share of large-size tires.
In fact, after Fengyuan Tire continuously increased the sales proportion of tires of 17 inches and above, in the first six months of 2024, Fengyuan Tire's operating income reached 898 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.65%, ranking third in the industry's growth rate during the same period; net profit reached 117 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 201.40%, and the year-on-year increase in net profit ranked second.
In 2024, Fengyuan Tire launched the E-CONTROLLER (E-CON for short) high-performance new energy tire, which received good feedback in the market. It is expected that the "High-performance Semi-steel Radial Tire Efficiency Improvement Technology Transformation Project" announced this time will be more conducive to Fengyuan Tire's research and development and manufacturing of high-end and high-value new tire products.
In addition to this new public announcement project. The Shandong Provincial Government announced the list of major provincial projects in 2025, involving a tire production capacity of more than 53.8 million.
In addition to listed head strong companies such as Sailun Tire and Prinx Chengshan, there are also emerging investors such as Superior Rubber, Tongyi Rubber and Maisega Rubber. These capacity constructions were filed as early as 2023.
It is worth noting that the off-road tire scale of Sailun Tire and Prinx Chengshan is above 10,000 tons. Among them, Sailun's off-road tire project has a designed production capacity of 150,000 tons, and Prinx Chengshan has a production capacity of 50,000 tons of off-road tires.
In addition to the 150,000-ton off-road tire project, Sailun also has an annual production of 30 million sets of high-performance radial tires and Qingdao Sailun New Materials Co., Ltd.'s annual production of 500,000 tons of functional new materials projects, with a total investment of more than 17.481 billion yuan.
The three emerging tire companies have a total investment of more than 11.8 billion yuan, and the total production capacity is planned to be 23.8 million tires.
60 million tires, 30 billion investment, this is just the explosion of tire production capacity in Shandong, in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, tire production capacity is also gushing out!
Jiangsu and Zhejiang have invested 15 billion tires, and 15 million sets of production capacity have been put into production
In the list of major projects in Jiangsu Province in 2025, Changzhou Zhongce High-Performance Radial Tire and Kubisen Tire are among them.
Among them, Kubisen was the first 10 billion tire investment project in China in early 2024. The planned production capacity at that time was 33.5 million sets, of which 30 million sets were semi-steel tires and 3.5 million sets were full-steel tires.
Under the accelerated promotion in 2024, the 15 million sets of semi-steel tire project of Kubisen Phase I entered trial production in December of the same year and has now been officially put into production.
And China's No. 1 tire manufacturer Zhongce Rubber, its high-performance tire project located in Changzhou Jintan Economic Development Zone has also been listed in the list of major projects in Jiangsu Province. The total investment of the project is as high as 5.422 billion yuan, and it is planned to increase the annual production capacity of 25 million high-performance semi-steel radial tires for Zhongce Rubber through two phases of the project.
In addition, on January 13, Zhejiang Jinma Tire also announced the environmental impact assessment documents for its annual production of 100,000 solid tires.
The total investment of the project is 10 million yuan, and the annual output value is expected to be 45 million yuan after it is put into production. It can be seen that at least the investment in tire production capacity in January 2025 is still in step with that in 2024, that is, domestic production capacity is still mainly in Shandong and the Yangtze River Delta region.
What about overseas tire investment? At present, it is not much different from 2024, and Cambodia is still the most concerned investment destination for Chinese tire factories.
Cambodia adds another 30 million production capacity
On January 7, 2025, Sailun Group announced an increase in investment in the "Cambodia All-Steel Radial Tire Expansion Project". On the basis of the previous annual production of 1.65 million all-steel radial tires, an additional 1.65 million all-steel tire production capacity will be added.
The investment amount this time reached US$93.48 million (RMB 680 million). After this expansion, Sailun's semi-steel tire production capacity in Cambodia will reach 21 million, and the annual production capacity of all-steel tires will reach 3.3 million, further enhancing the company's ability to cope with international trade barriers and enhancing the company's overall competitiveness.
On January 12, the Cambodian production base of Wanli Tire, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Industrial Control Group, was officially laid in the New Bavet Special Economic Zone in Svay Rieng Province, Cambodia. The annual production capacity of the project is planned to be 11.2 million (10 million semi-steel radial tires and 1.2 million full-steel radial tires). This move to Cambodia is an acceleration of Wanli Tire's global sales. According to the plan, the project is divided into two phases, with an investment of approximately US$239 million (RMB 1.739 billion) in the first phase, and a designed semi-steel tire production capacity of 6 million.
Another Shandong tire company, Zhengdao Tire, has filed its Cambodia Phase II project in January - an annual production of 1.5 million sets of full-steel radial tires. In March 2024, the company has deployed 6 million sets of semi-steel tires and 1.2 million sets of full-steel tires in Cambodia, and has promoted its land leveling and other preliminary work in December of the same year.
So far, Cambodia has welcomed six Chinese tire companies, including Sailun Tire, Qingdao Doublestar, General Shares, Fumax, Zhengdao Tire and Wanli Tire, to build factories. Including the registered plan, the total production capacity here has exceeded 72 million tires. If the factory construction continues at the current rate of capacity growth in the future, it seems likely to surpass Thailand and Vietnam and become the largest source of tire imports in the European and American markets.
12 factories have sprung up, and 110 million tires have squeezed into the market
In just over 20 days since 2025, 12 factories have sent nearly 110 million capacity signals to the industry, which is crazier than any other year. Can the market digest it?
At present, the market may really be able to eat up all this capacity?
Traditional global leading tire companies are frantically closing factories in Europe and the United States due to cost pressure, leaving a lot of "crying" demand in the market in the short term; at the same time, under the consumption downgrade, China's high-quality and price-performance tires are more popular. Chinese tire companies can also take advantage of this development opportunity to fill the gap, gradually cultivate the tire usage habits of global car owners, and "climb the ladder" to enter the global high-end market.
However, with the recovery of the global economy (in the third quarter of 2024, the sales of high-value replacement tires by leading tire companies have shown an upward trend), there is not much time left for Chinese tire companies to leapfrog their product sales. After selling a lot, Chinese tire companies also have to think about this question: how to sell tires at a higher price while ensuring sales in the next step.
