Goodyear to sell rubber plantation

Goodyear to sell rubber plantation

JAKARTA: Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the biggest North American tiremaker, agreed to sell its 95 percent stake in an Indonesian rubber-plantation unit to Bridgestone Corp. to end production of natural rubber and focus on tires.

The Goodyear Sumatra Plantations unit owns 47,000 acres (19,028 hectares) in North Sumatra province and has about 5,000 employees, company spokeswoman Tricia Ingraham said. The unit began operations in 1917 and owns Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear's last rubber plantations. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The sale to Japan's Bridgestone, the world's largest tiremaker, will not hurt Goodyear's ability to get natural rubber because the unit supplies less than 10 percent of Goodyear's needs for the material, Ingraham said. -- Bloomberg