Hankook Tire has signed an agreement with Finnish tire testing company Test World to exclusively operate a winter tire test center in Ivalo, Finland, a first among Korean tire producers.
Under the agreement, the South Korean tire manufacturer will build a winter tire test center in Ivalo, Finland and exclusively run it as a proving ground for its winter tires starting from December 2016.
Hankook Tire will invest in the proving ground area in the world's most northerly region to test its winter tires to the extreme under stable and long winter conditions. Thus, the new center will serve as an ideal location for carrying out research on winter tires.
Hankook Tire's new test centre will be outfitted with new test tracks for various test situations, safety facilities, offices, meeting rooms, etc. Once established, the Hankook Tire Global R&D Center and the Europe Technical Centre (ETC), the company’s R&D unit located in Hannover (Germany), will be responsible for managing the new winter tire test center.
Along with Hankook Tire Techno Dome, a state-of-the-art, high-tech research center scheduled to be complete in 2016, the new winter tire test center is expected to help Hankook Tire lead the market with top-tier technologies.
