According to the head of the region, the conveyor of the enterprise will start working in early June. Production will not be restored immediately, gradually. However, during the launch of the process, all employees, without exception, will receive wages in full, regardless of whether they participate in setting up equipment or not. According to the official, the stoppage of the conveyor is in no way related to the geopolitical situation - the whole thing was the lack of raw materials.
Quality control is multi-stage. Photo: YouTube.comThe branch in Lipetsk is the fourteenth Yokohama enterprise in the world producing tires. The Russian plant employs almost 750 people, and only 9 of them are Japanese (management). Before the start-up of the enterprise, all specialists underwent an internship for 2-6 months. But all the same, at first foreigners commanded the most important sections of the conveyor. The first phase of the plant is 100% loaded - 1,6 million tires are produced per year, which is 9% of the entire market for these products in the Russian Federation. The production process is not interrupted: 5 thousand skates leave the assembly line per day. The defect rate is negligible and amounts to 0,5% - the controllers send one tire out of two hundred to the "scrap".
The localization of production, obviously, is not complete, but it is present: almost 50% of raw materials are Russian (synthetic rubber, antioxidants, sulfur, zinc and its compounds, carbon). The question arises: why is localization not 100%? Samples of raw materials are checked in laboratories at the main plant in Japan, and there the management has already made the final decision. In addition, natural rubber, which is part of the compound, is not produced in the Russian Federation.
The company is run by the Japanese. Photo: YouTube.comThe Yokogama branch in Russia stopped working at the end of March due to a shortage of rubber and disruption of logistical ties with partners. To solve the problem, the regional authorities promised to “assist” through the Ministry of Transport and Trade in terms of speeding up the delivery of raw materials to the Lipetsk Tire Plant.
The Kaluga plant, which produces automobile rubber under the patronage of the German Continental, has also resumed production. However, according to unconfirmed information, this decision is not final and was made in order to "satisfy local demand." It is possible that the enterprise will stop again, as Michelin did and is only going to implement Bridgestone.
