HULUDAO, China — Tianxi Tire, a newly established Liaoning Province rubber industry enterprise, has broken ground on a heavy-duty truck and bus tire plant in an economic zone in that eastern Chinese province. 

Tianxi Tire has budgeted $210 million for the plant, which will be rated at 1.2 million units annually with 632 employees at full capacity. The 1.8 million-sq.-ft. plant is expected to generate $235 million of annual sales when fully operational, according to the project's environmental impact report.

The project, in Huludao's Xingcheng Binhai Economic Zone, is slated to come on stream in April 2020, the company told European Rubber Journal, a Tire Business sister publication. 

According to China's Tire Industry Policy effective since 2010, any newly built or expansion projects for heavy-duty radial tires should have at least 1.2 million unit annual capacity. About 40 percent of the project's capacity is for self-healing tires using Tianxi's own-technology automatic spray coater, said the report.

Tianxi Tire was set up in Huludao in July 2018. Chairman and controlling shareholder Chen Hongshan is a rubber sector veteran who has worked with a number of companies in the province. 

Tianxi is a name used by a number of emperors of China in the third and fourth centuries. 

Huludao is a coastal city of about 2.7 million inhabitants on the Bohai Sea in southwest Liaoning Province.