Hankook Tire supplies tires for Nissan's Frontier pickup

Hankook Tire & Technology Co., the world's sixth-largest tiremaker by sales, said Tuesday it has recently begun supplying tires for Nissan Motor Corp.'s Frontier pickup truck. 

Hankook Tire has provided the high-performance Dynapro HT and Dynapro AT2 SUV tires in the form of original equipment (OE) products for the pickup truck since July, the company said in a statement.   

To enhance its global brand image, the tiremaker has provided its OE tire products for 320 kinds of vehicles of nearly 50 foreign carmakers, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche.

Supplying OE tires to car manufacturers does not generate much revenue for tiremakers but securing big companies as clients helps improve their brand image, and can lead to boosting brand awareness and a rise in product prices down the line.

For tiremakers, it is more profitable to sell replacement equipment tires in after-sales markets.

From January to September, Hankook Tire's net profit more than doubled to 525.4 billion won from 235.2 billion won a year earlier.

Hankook Tire earns over 80 percent of its total revenue from abroad.

It has eight plants -- two in South Korea, one in Hungary, one in the United States, three in China and one in Indonesia -- whose combined capacity reaches 102 million tires per year. (Yonhap)