Qingdao Tire Industry, the Main Players Have Shifted to SMEs

Recently, the Qingdao Eco-Environment Bureau approved the aircraft tire project of Gubo (Shandong) Aviation Technology Co., Ltd.

Next to it is Sailun Group's annual production project of 12.6 million sets of high-performance radial tires, with a total investment of 2.342 billion yuan. The EIA was approved in April 2026, planned for production at the end of this year.

These two projects stand side by side on the same road, exactly marking the clearest dividing line in Qingdao's tire industry in recent years: the production capacity of industry leaders is moving overseas, and the spots freed up locally are being taken up by a batch of SMEs.

The production capacity of industry leaders has moved overseas in recent years

The capacity increase of these listed companies in Qingdao is mainly overseas. This is not a new move, but the proportion and intensity in the past two years have increased by a level.

In Sentinel's layout in three locations, Thailand and Morocco bear the main increase. In the first half of 2026, overseas revenue accounted for nearly 93%, and the net profit of the Thailand factory was about 411 million yuan, comparable to the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company of 420 million yuan — in other words, its current profit is almost contributed by overseas production capacity.

Sailun's overseas bases are more spread out, with projects in Mexico, Indonesia, and Egypt succeeding one after another in addition to Vietnam and Cambodia.

Double Star took another route, completing the acquisition of 45% equity in Kumho Tire at the end of March 2026, gaining control, and obtained ready-made overseas production capacity and channels through a capital operation.

The reason for moving production capacity overseas is not complicated: to cope with trade barriers, get closer to overseas customers, and utilize local raw materials and labor costs. But for Qingdao, the direct result is that local production no longer needs to bear scale increases.

What stays in Qingdao are high-end production lines and R&D platforms

The projects of industry leaders remaining locally are not large in quantity, but the positions are very high. Inside Sailun's Dongjiakou 12.6 million set project plant area, a functional new material project with an annual output of 500,000 tons is being built synchronously.

Sentinel's aircraft tire expansion and renovation project in Jimo has a total investment of 277 million yuan, without adding new land. It will add 4 million sets of high-performance semi-steel tires and restart the 50,000 set aircraft tire retread production line that has been stopped for five years.

The next level up is R&D. The National Rubber and Tire Engineering Technology Research Center, jointly built by Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Soft Control, and Sailun, plans to be put into use in Shibei District in 2027, with an R&D team size of more than 3,000 people.

Policy is also pushing in the same direction. The work plan for stable growth in the petrochemical and chemical industry issued by Qingdao in March 2026 lists new-generation high-performance radial tires, aircraft tires, new energy vehicle tires, and giant engineering radial tires as support directions; among the 600 municipal key projects in the city in 2026, 6 tire-related projects have a total investment of over 7 billion yuan, some of which are R&D platforms and research centers.

These investments remaining locally yield technology, equipment, and people, not production volume. The positions freed up by production volume are filled by others.

The list of new local projects has changed names

Listing the tire projects newly started in Qingdao in 2026, the investment subjects are almost all SMEs. Gubo's investor Qingdao Guobo Tire was established in 2013, and at the end of 2024, the registered capital was just increased from 10 million yuan to 50 million yuan.

Maishijia in Mingcun Town, Pingdu, invested 3 billion yuan, planning an annual tire production of over 11 million sets, with new energy passenger tires accounting for 90%. The company was also established in 2024.

In the same area, Aonuo Tire's semi-steel tire expansion project has a total plan of 1.074 billion yuan, divided into three phases; Qizhou Rubber invests 715 million yuan, Wangyu Rubber invests 567 million yuan, and both make high-end off-road tires.

Honghua Rubber Factory invested 220 million yuan to add 160,000 sets of all-steel engineering tires, while reducing bias tire capacity from 2.6 million to 1.42 million sets. At the same time, three motorcycle tire projects were launched in Huangdao District, among which Runing Industry invested 150 million yuan.

The single investment of this batch of projects is mostly in the hundreds of millions of yuan level, not on the same scale as industry leaders' projects of hundreds of millions or billions, and the categories made do not overlap.

This batch of projects makes another type of tire

The common point of the above projects is not touching ordinary tires; they make aircraft tires, ground special tires, off-road tires, engineering tires, agricultural radial tires, and motorcycle tires.

This choice has its reason: ordinary passenger tires and truck/bus tires rely on scale. A production line investment goes down to hundreds of millions, SMEs simply cannot enter; aircraft tires, engineering tires, these categories have small volume, but high certification barriers and thick gross margins, as long as qualifications are obtained, they can stand.

Pingdu is the farthest on this road. Among 27 tire enterprises in the city, 23 are in Mingcun Town. The output value in 2024 was 3.46 billion yuan, and bias tire capacity once accounted for nearly half of the province.

Therefore, the division of labor is already laid out: industry leaders' production capacity continues to move outward, locals keep technology, equipment, and high-end production lines, while SMEs fill in those categories with small volume and high barriers.

Whether this path holds depends on three things — whether certification and channels for specific categories can be built, whether upstream and downstream supporting can be completed, and the capacity utilization rate after new projects are put into production.

The shortcomings listed by Pingdu itself are also very clear: there are only 2 enterprises with output value over 500 million yuan, the industrial chain is not complete, and the conversion rate of scientific research achievements is not high. The local goal is to break through 5.5 billion yuan in the total output value of the tire industry by 2027. Placing this number next to Sailun's 20.027 billion yuan revenue in the first half alone, one can see the actual scale of this new pattern.