Nokian Tyres to build Spanish Testing Facility and Technology Center

Nokian Tyres has revealed plans to set up new testing facilities and a technology center in the PSanish town of Santa Cruz de la Zarza, which is about 50 miles southeast of Madrid. The site covers 300 hectares and the Finnish tire manufacturer will spend 16 million euros on setting up the new facility. Construction is slated to begin in early 2017 with the first part of the project to be completed by the end of next year and the entire facility to be operational by 2019.

The test facility will have a number of tracks for testing of both winter and summer tires at speeds ranging from 0 to 300 km/hr. These will include a five kilometer stretch which is a banked oval track circling the area.

Antti-Jussi Tähtinen, the company’s vice-president of marketing and communications said that the track is being planned in view of the high demand for Nokian’s high speed rating tires in Central Europe and North America, two markets where the company is focusing on growing further. There will be other test tracks in the center of the oval track, which will be used to test the behavior of the tires with respect to wet braking, aquaplaning, and handling. The test track can also be used for conducting tire approval tire tests including noise testing.

Tähtinen added that he location in Spain was selected on the basis of the fact that Nokian wanted a site in Southern Europe that offered plenty of sunshine, warmth and hot temperatures in addition to good air and road connections to facilitate the transport of cars, tires, test personnel and customers to and from the location. Nokian Tyres also plans to use the technology center to organize product launch events.

The site in Santa Cruz de la Zarza will complement Nokian Tyres’ Ivalo Testing Center in Finnish Lapland, which is a 700 hectare facility having over 20 test tracks. The company has another test track in its home base of Nokia, Finland.