BOI approves $ 75 m tyre plant in Horana by Steel Corporation

The Board of Investment has approved a project by Steel Corporation to build South East Asia’s biggest fully integrated tyre manufacturing plant in Horana with an investment of $ 75 million.

Its primary aim is to leverage on the global reputation that the country enjoys of the quality natural rubber produced here and take it to a higher level of value addition. Foundation for the venture will be laid in January.

Project promoters said the tyre plant will create over 3,000 job opportunities, both direct and indirect, while focusing on the professionals, who would stand to gain the exposure to ultramodern technology in this very place of their birth; which expertise would then translate to them being the sort after professionals the world over.

For the plant is emphatic on meeting the demands of a broad spectrum of tyre products of the European market as well as the local feed. High performing radials to load bearing OTRs, from car tyres to three wheelers and two wheeler tyres to trucks, lorries and forklifts. The plant would also manufacture retreads as well as state-of-the-art rims as well.  

The machinery deployed would meet the stringiest tests for optimal energy efficiency, be clinical about, pollutants, emissions and waste disposal. And when the tyres roll out from the sprawling complex of 100 acres, idyllic in setting, iconic in architecture and an embodiment of ‘a green industry’, it will be rolling out a blueprint of the nation’s future: Value adding all our resources – local entrepreneurship, Nation’s professionals, labour infused with new skills and all the while expanding on our natural resource, rubber, to gain lucrative returns to fill the nation’s coffers.