Cooper Tire to Hold Qingdao GRT Company

On January 6, Cooper Tire & Rubber Company signed an agreement with Qingdao GRT Rubber Co., Ltd. to invest about RMB 600 Million Yuan (equivalent to USD 93 Mil- lion) for purchasing 65% shares of this company and the ini- tial operation input. This company will be renamed to Cooper (Qingdao) Tire Co., Ltd. (CQT for short in English). After relevant permits and approvals of the Chinese government, the delivery is predicted to be completed in the first half of 2016.

Cooper (Qingdao) Tire Co., Ltd. will be the all-steel tire supplier of Cooper in the world, whose products include Roadmaster brand tires supplied to North American market and the all-steel tires supplied to Asian and other markets. In the future, this company will also produce saloon car tires. Cooper (Qingdao) Tire Co., Ltd. has the workshops covering an area of 1 million square feet. After the overall expansion, it is predicted to produce about 2.5 million ~ 3 million all- steel tires annually and nearly equal number of saloon car tires.

After the acquisition, Cooper (Qingdao) Tire Co., Ltd. will be included in the system of Cooper Company, existing simultaneously with other seven tire manufactures. These seven manufacturers include three American plants respec- tively in Findley, Ohio, Texarkana, Arkansas and Tupelo, Mississippi, the plants in Kunshan, China, Melksham, UK, and Krusevac, Serbia and a joint venture plant near Guadala- jara, Mexico.

US Cooper Tire entered the Chinese market in April 2006 and founded the Asian-Pacific headquarters in Shang- hai. In June 2008, Gooper Tire Asia-Pacific Technical Center was founded in Shanghai to support the research, development and test of the products in the Chinese market and exported abroad. In January 2014, the new Gooper Tire Asia-Pacific Technical Center was moved to Kunshan Plant. At present, US Cooper Tire has more than 3,000 retail stores in China with the retail service network spreading over the whole country.

At present, GRT Rubber Company, invested by Qingdao Yiyuan Investment Co., Ltd. and founded in 2014, has about 600 employees on active duty, which is mainly engaged in the production of all-steel tires in the earlier stage.