Major Fire at Bridgestone Tyre Plant in Japan

A big fire broke out at a Bridgestone Corp tyre plant in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, on Monday and people in the area had to be evacuated, although there were no injuries, local fire officials said.

They said it was difficult for fire engines to get near the blaze.

"It's a very big fire and there's a lot of black smoke. The whole east side of the factory is burning," said an official with the fire department in the neighbouring area of Nasu.

He said that the fire appeared to have broken out in an area of the factory used for rubber mixing.

It was not immediately clear how many people had been evacuated. A Bridgestone official declined comment on the factory's normal output and on which customers bought the tyres produced there.

Bridgestone, who supply tyres to five of the current Formula One teams, said the factory where they produce their racing tyres was not affected by the fire.

"It's not our F1 production factory, so in that respect it does not affect our F1 project," Bridgestone Motorsport spokeswoman Rachel Ingram told Atlas F1.

Analysts said it was a large plant, making tyres for passenger cars, trucks and buses, but that it was just one of Bridgestone's nine domestic and 46 plants worldwide, so the fire was unlikely to have a huge impact on group operations.

"We don't know the extent of the fire yet - whether it will result in the loss of one or two days' production or whether the whole plant will be lost, but at the moment I am not too worried," said analyst Masataka Kunugimoto at Nomura Securities.

"I estimate that the plant accounts for roughly three to four percent of Bridgestone's annual group tyre output," he said.

Bridgestone is the second Japanese company in a week to be hit by a major fire, after the nation's second-largest steel maker, Nippon Steel Corp, suffered an explosion and fire at its Nagoya plant, its third-biggest, on Wednesday.

The Nagoya plant is a major supplier of steel sheets to some of Japan's top auto makers, including Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co, and the car firms had been worried that a prolonged delay in restarting the plant could damage their business.

Nippon Steel has said it hopes to restore 70 percent of production at the plant this week. Bridgestone's shares fell as low as 1,653 yen on the news but recovered some ground to end down 1.01 percent at 1,663 yen.