Double Coin Holdings plans to expand its truck tire manufacturing facility in Rugao, China, by adding a low-rolling resistance truck line that will produce an additional 1.5 million truck and bus radial tires a year.

The new line will be built in a facility immediately behind the existing Rugao factory, which produces 2.7 million TBR tires and 100,000 off-the-road tires a year, many of which are destined for the U.S. market and sold by China Manufacturers Alliance, a Double Coin subsidiary based in California.

A second mixing facility has already been built and is in use now, though Feng didn't provide an exact date of when construction of the second factory would begin.

The expansion represents a 1.5 billion Yuan investment, or $234 million. Feng said the company expects to produce 4.2 million TBR tires annually in Rugao by 2018.

The Rugao plant, located three hours northwest of Double Coin’s headquarters in Shanghai, is becoming an especially important focus of the company’s manufacturing efforts. Production costs, including wages and utilities, are lower there than in Shanghai, a city of 23 million people. As a result the company has moved some of its Shanghai production to Rugao.

Shanghai continues to serve as the home of Double Coin’s technical center, as well as its giant over the road production line, where the company’s largest tires, measuring 57 inches, are made.