How Tire Brands Achieve Global Sustainable Development

From simply selling products to establishing factories overseas and exporting complete systems, Linglong Tire is taking a more substantial and robust path.

Global trade is becoming increasingly volatile, and exporting a single product can easily encounter barriers. Linglong's approach is to move its supply chain overseas, conducting R&D, production, and OEM manufacturing locally. They have established eight R&D centers in China, Germany, and the United States, developing products simultaneously for different market conditions, regulations, and automaker requirements, rather than simply adapting existing products. Their two major overseas bases in Thailand and Serbia are already in stable mass production.

The Serbian factory is the first production base for a Chinese tire company in Europe, located almost adjacent to the supply chains of German automakers like Volkswagen, Audi, and BMW. This proximity significantly shortens delivery cycles and makes securing OEM orders easier. The factory has now passed the audits of brands like Volkswagen, Audi, and BMW and has begun entering the supply chains of major European automakers. Currently, eight of the world's top ten automakers have OEM partnerships with Linglong, with a cumulative supply of over 300 million tires.

They are also jointly developing tires for new energy vehicles, aiming to push their OEM business towards higher-end markets. In the domestic replacement tire market, Linglong has woven a dense distribution network of nearly 30,000 stores, coupled with a four-tiered distribution system connecting regional warehouses, central warehouses, and terminal delivery, ensuring a smooth logistics chain.

Through its new retail "smart store system," inventory, sales, and service data are all online, orders can be intelligently distributed, and terminal stockouts and demands can be fed back to manufacturers in real time. This allows factories and warehouses to respond quickly to store requests, resulting in faster inventory turnover.

Now, overseas R&D and manufacturing, combined with domestic channel capabilities, are gradually forming a global operating model of "nearby R&D, local production, and rapid delivery." Linglong is no longer just selling tires; it is exporting technical standards, manufacturing systems, and service capabilities.

Tire manufacturing involves numerous and complex processes, from mixing and molding to vulcanization. Ensuring consistent quality across these processes has long been a headache for the industry. Linglong uses an industrial internet platform to connect data from its global factories, covering the entire process from raw material procurement to terminal delivery. Production status is visible in real time, and process parameters can be dynamically adjusted.

Errors that cannot be contained by manual quality inspection are now mitigated by data, resulting in more stable quality control. To address the need for collaborative production across multiple bases, they have also built a supply chain collaboration platform, breaking down physical boundaries between factories and enabling dynamic capacity allocation. When global orders fluctuate, the system can flexibly allocate production tasks to each base, further shortening delivery cycles.

This digital system not only manages production but also connects upstream to R&D data and downstream to channel demand, forming a data closed loop from demand and R&D to manufacturing and delivery. This ensures that even with market fluctuations and logistical disruptions, Linglong's supply chain is more resilient and responsive.

Linglong considers green manufacturing a long-term, mandatory course for the company. The global automotive industry is undergoing a low-carbon transformation, and green and circular technologies are becoming new market entry barriers. Linglong has set clear goals for carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement timeline, and is gradually implementing these goals around energy structure, low-carbon processes, and a circular industrial chain.

They have installed rooftop solar panels in multiple factories both domestically and internationally, and the proportion of renewable energy is expected to continue rising in 2026, while fossil fuel consumption in the manufacturing process continues to decrease. On the raw material side, sustainable raw materials such as bio-based materials, recycled carbon black, and recycled rubber are being promoted and applied, and the iteration of low-carbon formulas is ongoing.

Simultaneously, Linglong is also collaborating with upstream and downstream partners to build a recycling network for waste tires, managing the entire tire lifecycle from recycling to pyrolysis, and then to the reuse of recycled materials in tires, exploring a viable circular economy model for the rubber industry. They are also one of the earliest companies in mainland China to join the global sustainable natural rubber platform, promoting sustainable management of the upstream natural rubber supply chain and aiming to solidify the green foundation of the entire supply chain.

Looking ahead, the global automotive industry landscape and mobility demands will continue to evolve, creating more opportunities for new energy vehicle tires, low-carbon products, and localized support. Linglong's direction is to continue strengthening its global management and digital capabilities, achieving breakthroughs in brand, product, and channel development.

Leveraging its global R&D platform, the company iterates its product matrix to adapt to various scenarios, including new energy vehicles, off-road vehicles, and high-end passenger vehicles; it improves overseas production capacity to consolidate its advantage of localized supply; and it empowers channel partners with digital tools to provide more refined end-user services.

With technological innovation and green development progressing in parallel, the company steadily moves towards becoming a world-class tire enterprise, providing stable, reliable, and environmentally friendly tires and supporting solutions for various travel scenarios.