by Mariam Raheem

 

Under the scorching sun, Pakistan’s first TBR factory, located in Karachi, is under tight construction. In 2019, Chaoyang Long March Tyre Co. Ltd and Pakistani Service Industrial Ltd reached a joint venture agreement to work together to make up for the gap in Pakistan’s tire manufacturing industry.

 

It is learnt that the project of the joint venture, Service Long March Tyres Ltd (SLM Tyres), has completed 60% of the civil work and plans to start commercial trial production by the end of 2021. Recently, Gwadar Pro conducted an exclusive interview with George Zhang, Director of SLM Tyres.

 

According to George Zhang, Pakistan’s freight transport is mainly by road. In recent years, the market demand for TBR is becoming more and more exuberant, increasing at an average annual rate of 10%. Every year, Pakistan spends US $300 million to US $400 million in foreign exchange on importing TBR, and the completion of the joint venture project will not only directly serve the needs of the local market, solve 700-800 jobs, but also generate foreign exchange earnings of more than US $100 million, becoming a new growth point for Pakistan’s exports.

 

“After SLM Tyres is put into production, the production capacity of the first phase is expected to be 600,000, with a total of 2.4 million of the three phases, which will greatly improve the on-time supply in Pakistan’s domestic and foreign markets.” Zhang said.

 

 

As people pay more and more attention to energy saving, emission reduction and green environmental protection, “green tire” has become the development trend of the global tire manufacturing industry. In this regard, Zhang said: “ SLM Tyres will carry out whole tyre life cycle environmental management in the aspects of raw material selection, technical formulation, production organization,  sales, product recovery and so on, so as to better improve production efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. We are fully committed to making green tires in Pakistan.”

 

Telling reasons for choosing Pakistan as the first country to set up joint venture and factory overseas, Zhang stated that, “our Pakistani partner SERVICE has a strong desire to produce TBR and has good experience in tyre production. Pakistan has abundant human resources, its staff costs are lower than those in Southeast Asia, and investment in building a factory in Pakistan also helps to avoid countervailing, anti-dumping and trade war.”

Currently, Chaoyang Long March Tire Company is promoting the listing of the company to realize the great-leap-forward development of the enterprise. Zhang is also full of confidence about the future development of Service Long March Tyres Ltd.