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Goodyear Slovenia has been a part of the Goodyear Corporation, one of the world’s largest tire companies, since 1998. During this time, Goodyear has invested €370 million to develop its Kranj facility. Our focus is not only on long-term stable growth, continuous production of high-quality, premium-segment tires, and advancements in future mobility, but also on employee care, environmental protection, and the local community.

Our standard for success has been based on a commitment to continuous improvement. Constant investments represent an essential contribution to ongoing process improvements and to maintaining the competitiveness and stability of our company based in Kranj. The size of our business enables us to employ around 1,600 people, which makes us one of the country’s biggest employers.

At the end of 2018, when we celebrated 20 years of operation under the Goodyear wings, we were excited to announce our most significant recent investment. As the demand for premium, larger-rim-diameter consumer tires is growing across Europe and in order to ensure the sustainable growth of our business, Goodyear decided to invest €94 million in its Slovenian facility with the aim of expanding the capacity of our manufacturing facility in Kranj.

The investment will add 5400 square meters to our premises to accommodate advanced tire building machines, increasing the plant’s overall capacity by approximately 25%. This will allow for production of an additional 1.8 million premium, high-quality consumer tires per year. We expect to create about 160 new job positions, mainly in production.

The first phase of the expansion investment, which included construction of one additional building and the installation of advanced machines for tire production, was completed at the end of 2019 as planned. The beginning of the next or second phase, which was planned in 2020, was postponed to 2021 shortly after the start of the pandemic and is now well underway. We have already filled around 60 new job positions and the project is currently scheduled for completion in the second half of 2022.

Goodyear’s decision to make this important investment here in Kranj reflects the company’s trust and confidence in our local team’s high-quality production and is a great recognition of our performance over more than two decades, of which we are exceedingly proud.

Matej Zavrl, Managing Director, Goodyear Slovenija, d. o. o.