Nokian Tyres has completed the hire of 125 workers at its North American factory in Dayton, Tennessee as the company prepares to double production at the facility by 2024. This brings the team at the factory to more than 475 employees.
The company is adding equipment that will allow the Dayton factory to produce as many as 4 million all-season and all-weather tires per year by 2024. Construction also continues on a 600,000-tire warehouse next to the production building that will be ready in the summer of 2024. The storage facility will join the company’s nine-warehouse network throughout the U.S. and Canada and will serve a growing volume of customers in the Sun Belt, the company says.
Products made at the factory include the all-season Nokian Tyres One, the all-weather Nokian Tyres WR G4 and the all-terrain Nokian Tyres Outpost family.
Nokian Tyres opened its Dayton Factory in the fall of 2019 and began producing tires for commercial sale in early 2020. A 2021 hiring campaign enabled the factory to expand to four shifts and 24/7 production. The current equipment expansion allows Nokian Tyres to add light truck tires to the Dayton Factory’s product mix.
The majority of new team members serve as production operators. The company also hired specialists in maintenance, quality, logistics and general administration. New employees are working alongside mentors in each production area in a personalized training program designed to maintain quality and culture as the factory grows.
In its three-plus years of operations in Dayton, the company has earned recognition for its workplace culture, operations and sustainability. The Dayton Factory’s production building is the only tire production facility in the world to possess LEED v4 Silver certification, and its LEED v4 Gold-certified administration building is fully powered by energy generated from onsite solar panels.
