News

The Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers (ARPM) will host its Seals Product Design and Manufacturing Training program October 26–30, 2026, at The Training Center at Metro Plastics Technologies, LLC, in Noblesville, Indiana. The intensive, five-day course is designed for design engineers, quality engineers, sales engineers, product engineers, and process engineers who work with rubber seals throughout the product development cycle.

United Steelworkers members have ratified a new contract with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., securing a multiyear agreement covering roughly 2,600 workers at plants in Ohio, Kansas and Virginia.

Goodyear reiterated the planned closure in its Aug. 5 second-quarter earnings announcement, saying the Fayetteville facility will be closed as part of a strategy to “align its footprint with its evolving product portfolio and improve the competitiveness of its manufacturing network in the Americas.”

The company expects the action to improve Americas segment operating income by about $90 million in 2027 and approximately $270 million annually beginning in 2028, according to the earnings release.

The Tire Society, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing the science and technology of tires, announced the Program for its 45th Annual Conference and Business Meeting on Tire Science and Technology. The conference will take place September 22–23, 2026, at the University of Akron’s Jean Hower Taber Student Union, under the theme “Reinventing the Tire: Digital Transformation, Data-Driven Advances, and Predictive Methods.”

Continental celebrated the groundbreaking of its new highly automated finished-goods warehouse during a ceremony at its Mount Vernon, Illinois, tire plant Thursday. The event brought together plant employees, local officials and project stakeholders to mark the beginning of construction on the facility, which represents an investment of approximately $76 million and is expected to begin operations in 2027.

DUNLOP announced that it signed a joint research agreement in Bangkok, Thailand, on August 7, 2026, as a project under the Hevea Research Platform in Partnership (HRPP), an international platform for natural rubber research. The other parties to the agreement are the Rubber Authority of Thailand (RAOT), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), and Thailand’s Khon Kaen University and Kasetsart University.