Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Mississippi, a manufacturing subsidiary of Yokohama Tire Corp., officially broke ground on its new commercial truck tire manufacturing plant in West Point, Miss., which is slated to begin operations in October 2015.

Yokohama is making an initial $300 million investment in the facility with approximately 500 jobs expected to be created at first phase. The roughly 1-million-square-foot factory, to be constructed on more than 500 acres of land, will include production, warehousing and operations facilities, and will produce up to one million tires annually.

Company officials did not have further information about specific tire sizes the plant will produce, other than truck and bus radials.

The plant could eventually expand from the initial 1 million to 5 million square feet, which would be 115 acres under roof. At that point the plant would have 2,000 employees and produce 4 million tires annually.

The groundbreaking ceremony capped an event-filled weekend for Yokohama, where it:

• Formally introduced Tadaharu Yamamoto as president of YTMM.

• Discussed its recently opened operational headquarters in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park in Starkville, Miss. It houses several business functions, including administrative, human resources, information management and planning.

“Today is a very exciting day as Yokohama prepares to begin construction of its very first U.S. manufacturing facility to be built from the ground up,” said Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant. “Just five short months ago, the company announced its plans to locate these operations in West Point."

Bob Bissler from sister publication Modern Tire Dealer contributed to this story, including the photos.