China’s Maxtrek Tyres building plant in Malaysia

China’s Zhaoqing Junhong Corp. Ltd. — d.b.a. Maxtrek Tyres — broke ground June 15 on a car and truck tire plant in the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park in Kuantan.

The plant, Maxtrek’s first outside of China, is designed to produce 6 million car and light truck tires and 500,000 truck/bus tires a year. Zhaoqing Junhong set up a subsidiary, Maxtrek Tyre Manufacturing Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., to oversee the project.

The company, which goes to market with the Antares and Maxtrek brands, said the project represents an investment of “several hundreds of millions” of Malaysian ringgit (100 million ringgit equals about $24 million at prevailing currency exchange rates).

Kuantan is a city of about 425,000 on Malaysia’s eastern coast, about 150 miles east of Kuala Lumpur. It’s the capital of the state of Pahang.

Set up in 2006 in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, Zhaoqing Junhong has 1,000 employees at its headquarters factory.

Among the companies selling/promoting the Maxtrek brand in the U.S. is SimpleTire.com. Horizon Tire Co. is a leading importer/distributor of the Antares brand.

This will be the second Chinese tire factory in Malaysia, following Fullrun Tyre Corp.’s plant in Port Klang that opened in March with annual capacities of 3 million passenger and 500,000 truck/bus tires.