Cement Americas provides comprehensive coverage of the North and South American cement markets from raw material extraction to delivery and tranportation to end user.
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www.cementamericas.com • Winter 2015 • CEMENT AMERICAS 23 FEATURE BRIDGESTONE TIRE PLANT create a green tire (uncured). The tire is cured through a vulcanizing process using pressure and heat over time to cook the tire into the final shape. A bladder inflates the green tire and presses it against the mold at a precise temperature for a spe- cific length of time to create the fin- ished product. The Aiken plant currently has four kilns that can accommodate several molds each. The last step in the manufacturing process is the final inspection. The tires also pass through x-ray and ultrasound tests, as well as physical inspection by technicians, who use their hands, eyes and expertise to make sure every tire is top notch. Only after each tire passes all of Bridgestone's quality inspections will it be released and sent to the customer. A tire gets rejected less than 10 percent of the time. It depends on the abnor- mality, but the majority of the time tires are rejected for a surface blemish or something on the outside that is ap- pearance related. Many times the tech- nicians can buff and rework the outside of the tire. If an internal abnormality is detected through the X-ray or ultra- sound process, the tire is scrapped and recycled. Bridgestone flew key techni- cians to Japan to be formally trained on the manufacturing process for ultra- class mining tires and they brought those skills back to the Aiken Plant. A COMMITMENT FOR THE BUSINESS Bridgestone has two mining-class tire plants in Japan. Importing these giant tires into the U.S. through West Coast ports can sometimes be problematic. That will no longer be the case for Bridgestone. And, with its close proximity to the Port of Charleston, the company can easily export tires to mines in Latin America. "One of our great assets as an or- ganization is the ability to leverage resources around the world," said Kurt Danielson, president of U.S. & Canada Commercial Tire Sales, Bridgestone Americas Tire Opera- tions. "In the past, we would trans- port the tires by ship and rail. Having tires produced and shipped domesti- cally allows us to get the product to the mines in the Americas much more quickly." While he declined to give exact fig- ures relating to the new plants pro- duction capacity for competitive reasons, Danielson explained that the capacity is certainly enough to satisfy the current demand throughout the Americas. "If there were another major upswing in the mining busi- ness, we would be better prepared to meet that demand." F Steve Fiscor is editor of Coal Age and En- gineering and Mining Journal magazines.