Goodyear names head of remaining business in RP

MANILA, Philippines - Goodyear Philippines has appointed its first Filipino managing director to head the US tiremaker’s remaining business activities in the country. 

Gerry Alava will oversee the Philippine operations in marketing, retail distribution, finance, human resources and government relations; build on the company’s growing network of dealers throughout the country, and maintain Goodyear’s overall leadership position in the industry through superior customer service and product quality

Alava is Goodyear Philippines’ first Filipino local head in its 53-year history. He succeeds Dave Morin who has led Goodyear Philippines’ operation as president and managing director for the past six years. 

The company closed its manufacturing plant in the country last month after more than 50 years of operations and 500 of its 600 employees lost their jobs.

According to Morin, they are closing the plant in Las Piñas because of weak export demand. He said there is already a problem in the utilization of local capacity given the slow sales of tires overseas.

During the fourth quarter last year, Morin said they saw the severe impact of the global economic contraction to the local manufacturing operation. In fact last December, they retrenched seven percent of their workforce or 46 people.

Morin said they tried to asses their cost competitiveness. “We hoped the export business will come back. To date it has not come back,” he noted. “We don’t anticipate recovery.”

He said the business model became unsustainable that is why they decided to make changes in the cost structure.

He explained that if only the drop was in the domestic demand, the plant could have continued operating but because overseas sales were affected he said they could no longer sustain the plant. In fact, he said they were meeting their domestic target in the second quarter. 

Morin did not give the breakdown of domestic and international sales. He said tires produced in the country were sold in North America, South America, Europe and the Caribbean Islands.

The manufacturing plants in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand will now be supplying the local demand for tires.

With regards to the 500 people losing their jobs, Morin said they will be offering retrenchment packages that exceed the legal requirement.