Cooper Tire & Rubber To Buy Majority Of Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Cooper Tire & Rubber Company (CTB) announced that it has entered into an agreement to purchase a majority of China-based Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber Co., Ltd. or GRT.

Cooper will own 65 percent of the entity, which will be renamed Cooper Qingdao Tire Co., Ltd. or CQT, for approximately 600 million RMB or $93 million including the acquisition and initial investments in the operation.

The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016 pending certain permits and approvals by the Chinese government.

CQT is expected to serve as a global source of truck and bus radial (TBR) tire production for Cooper including Roadmaster brand tires for the North American market as well as TBR tires for Asia and other markets. Passenger car radial (PCR) tires may also be manufactured at the facility in the future. It is estimated that at full capacity, CQT will be capable of producing approximately 2.5 million to 3 million TBR tires annually and nearly the same number of PCR tires within the existing one million-square-foot production facility, with room for further expansion at the location.

Upon closing, CQT will join seven other tire manufacturing facilities in the Cooper family of companies with three U.S. plants in Findlay, Ohio; Texarkana, Arkansas and Tupelo, Mississippi, as well as facilities in Kunshan, China; Melksham, England; Krusevac, Serbia and a joint venture plant near Guadalajara, Mexico.