Independent Freelance Consultant · Tire Plant Projects
35 years in tire plant projects and more than USD 1,000 million of projects delivered, from concept through commissioning. Formerly Senior Vice President, Projects at Yokohama Off-Highway Tires. I work inside your organisation, with your team and your resources. No new team, no office, no overhead.
You are bringing in a project director, not a consultancy. Almost everything it takes to run your project you already own. I work inside it.
I work through the engineers already on your payroll. Where a project genuinely needs a specialist I bring one in, for that scope only, answerable to me. You never carry a bench between phases.
Your site office, your systems, your drawings. There is nothing to set up, nothing to fund between phases and nothing left behind to pay for once the plant is running.
Your contractors, vendors and staff stay yours and stay on your contracts. I run them to one cost and one schedule baseline instead of standing a second organisation up beside them.
One person carries the cost, the schedule and the outcome, and that person is on your project every day of it.
What that has been worth: plants delivered at 20 to 50 per cent less cost and time than budgets set by people who build tire plants for a living, by value engineering the design before it was frozen.
I have delivered complete tire plants end to end, covering land, capex, construction, machinery, utilities, hiring and ramp-up, in senior project roles at JK Tyres, Goodyear and Yokohama Off-Highway Tires.
Across those plants I have built more than 10 lakh (1 million) square metres of civil and pre-engineered building construction, at the lowest civil cost of any comparable build I have been involved in.
The record is specific. Mexico Phase 1, at USD 389 million and 255 TPD on 260 acres, came in at close to half the approved cost and timeline. Vizag was built and started up through the peak of COVID. A shut factory in Romania was revamped and restarted. Goodyear's Philippines plant was relocated to India.
Today I work independently. You get the person who ran these projects rather than a firm or a junior team, backed by specialists assembled per project and managed to one cost and schedule baseline.
Delivered in senior project roles at JK Tyres, Goodyear and Yokohama Off-Highway Tires. The numbers below come from value engineering applied before the design was frozen, not from cutting scope after it was.
A greenfield on 260 acres with 100,000 sq. m of civil construction, planned and commissioned at close to half the originally approved project cost and timeline, through value engineering of the design basis, the utilities and the machinery specification.
More than a million square metres of civil works and pre-engineered buildings designed, tendered and built, at the lowest civil cost of any comparable programme I have worked on.
200,000 sq. m of construction and full production startup on 114 acres, executed through the peak of COVID with the fastest ramp-up achieved for OHT and PCR.
Led from land execution through to startup of a fully automated facility, including ASRS automated warehousing.
200,000 sq. m of construction delivered on time, with the fastest ramp-up for OHT, all-steel ROTR and TBR.
A shut-down plant taken through complete revamp of civil, utilities, electricals, fire protection and legacy machinery to restart ROTR production, now expanding into Giant ROTR.
Goodyear's Philippines plant dismantled, moved and re-commissioned after major overhauls of the Banbury 270 mixer line, 8×8″ cold-feed extruder line, radial TBM and curing machines, in newly built facilities.
Capacity expansion of the Yokohama India (YIN) plant, taking annual output from 2.8 million to 4.5 million tires inside a running factory, without stopping production.
Capacity enhancements, revamps and product-segment upgrades delivered inside running plants, plus the Gopalpur Giant Radial OTR greenfield directed in parallel with the Mexico programme.
Fourteen locations across six countries. The map further down plots the same list.
Nine areas of work. Take the full span, or bring me in exactly where the problem is.
Value engineering is not cost-cutting. Cutting takes capability out of a plant; value engineering asks what each line of the capex has to do, then finds the cheapest way to do it that still meets the specification. It has to happen before the design is frozen, which is why it belongs at feasibility and not in a late review. This is the discipline behind Mexico landing at close to half its approved cost, and behind a million square metres of civil and PEB work built at the lowest civil cost I have achieved.
Those are the headline ones. In practice a greenfield carries several dozen approvals across land, construction, utilities, environment, safety, labour and product, and the law behind them moves: three of the statutes a tire plant runs on changed in the last eighteen months. I track the whole set, hold the sequence against the construction programme, and tell you which ones are on the critical path.
Setting up a first tire plant. Complete greenfield support, from land to the first tire off the line.
Adding capacity, products or automation, without stopping current production.
Half-built sites, over-budget programmes, shut plants. An honest audit of what is recoverable, then a restart that holds.
New machines, a used line or a whole second-hand plant, with independent judgement before the money moves.
Commissioning support, ramp-up help, or a hard look at conversion cost and energy per ton.
Independent technical review of a tire project, before, during or after the commitment.
Engagements scale to the problem: a single conversation, a diagnostic review, an advisory retainer, a rescue mandate, or full consultancy through startup. Every one starts the same way: you describe the project, and I tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
Start from the tires you intend to sell. That fixes the process; the process fixes the machines; the machines fix the buildings. Plants designed the other way round pay for it every day for thirty years.
Owners usually assemble a technology consultant, an architect, an EPC contractor, a recruiter and a liaison agent, then spend two years reconciling them. I hold all of it against one cost baseline and one schedule.
You do not have to commit to anything to talk. The first conversation costs nothing, and it is usually where the most expensive mistakes get caught.
Site due diligence, zoning and land-use conversion, and a master plan that fixes where every future phase will stand before the first truck arrives.
Every stage below is one I have specified machinery for, installed, commissioned and run.
Passenger radials on automated lines through to one-off Giant ROTR for mining haul trucks. Pick a segment to inspect it and see where it was built.
A layout is not a floor plan. It is the permanent decision about how far material travels, how many people it takes and how much you can expand. Click any block to inspect it.
A delivered greenfield layout, simplified. Material enters at raw material stores and leaves as finished tires from the warehouse. Every metre between those two points is conversion cost.
Projects in India, Mexico, Romania, Israel, Japan and the Philippines, and first-hand visits to tire-machinery makers across Europe, Asia and the USA.
Trainee engineer in 1991. Senior Vice President directing a global portfolio. Independent consultant today. Every rung of it inside tire plant projects.
Independent advisory and project consultancy for owners, boards and lenders: greenfield and brownfield programmes, machinery sourcing and commissioning, used-machinery evaluation and relocation, and the rescue of stalled projects. One senior consultant, with proven specialists assembled per project and managed to a single cost and schedule baseline.
Joined as DGM Projects / Project Head; promoted through General Manager to Senior Vice President. Directed the company's global greenfield and brownfield portfolio from concept through commissioning, steering multiple international projects in parallel with a live capital portfolio exceeding USD 500 million, and advising leadership on capacity strategy, capex and technology selection.
Capacity-enhancement and relocation projects across two plants.
Fourteen years learning the plant from the floor up.
Planning a tire plant, expanding one, buying machinery, or holding one that has lost its way. The first conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation.