News - 2021

Tokyo (November 1, 2021) ― Bridgestone Corporation (Bridgestone) announced today that it will withdraw from conveyor belt business. Bridgestone plans to reduce its production and sales volume gradually to minimize the impact to the operations of its customers and suppliers, and will withdraw from the business completely by the end of 2024.

Bridgestone is restructuring the portfolio of its diversified products business to sharply focus on areas where it can leverage its core competencies. This is part of the overall reinforcement of portfolio management in the Mid Term Business Plan (2021-2023), announced on February 16, 2021. The Mid Term Business Plan aims to rebuild earning power through expense and cost structure reformation and enforcing premium business strategy to allow the company to enhance strategic growth investment. By executing these strategies, Bridgestone is transforming to a "strong" Bridgestone capable of adapting to the changing business environment.

Conveyor belt business is part of the chemical and industrial products business which represents about half of the sales of the Bridgestone Group's diversified products business. The Group has both taken up and withdrawn from various diversified chemical and industrial products businesses throughout its history, responding to changes in social needs and the business environment. Without exception, Bridgestone considered and evaluated conveyor belt business thoroughly and comprehensively, including potential to leverage Bridgestone's core competencies, profitability toward the future, synergy within the Group such as contribution to the brand, before the decision was made. The key point toward the decision was that it would not be possible for its conveyor belt business to keep providing both superior social and customer value while securing profitability.

All employees associated with conveyor belt business are highly skilled and experienced, and Bridgestone is expecting most of its current employees to continue to work as members of the Bridgestone Group. Bridgestone is also working closely with local communities to minimize the impact as much as possible.

The overview of conveyor belt business is as follows.

＜Consolidated sales amount on global basis＞
Approximately 11.2 billion yen (2020 actual)

＜Overview of production and R&D footprints＞
Note : All footprints mentioned below manufacture and/or develop products other than conveyor belts, and there is no plan to close any of the footprints.

The Bridgestone Group will reinforce its portfolio management in line with the changing business environment, to evolve to a sustainable solutions company which aims to continuously provide social value and customer value.

Bridgestone expects the impact on its consolidated financial results for 2021 to be minor. For more information on the Bridgestone Group's Mid Term Business Plan (2021-2023), click here.

＜For reference: Progress of business portfolio / manufacturing footprints restructuring＞
*Business portfolio restructuring

*Manufacturing footprint restructuring