2026: 80 Billion Tyres Surge Overseas

The journey of Chinese tyre expansion has evolved from single-point breakthroughs to full-scale booms.

Since Sailing Group invested in Vietnam in 2012, building the first overseas factory for Chinese tyres, officially opening the overseas curtain, it has now formed a scaled, globalized industrial landscape.

A recent set of major revenue data disclosed by the China Rubber Industry Association directly confirms this decade-spanning overseas wave: 14 key tyre enterprises achieved a total overseas base revenue of 79.913 billion yuan in 2026, compared to 54.082 billion yuan the previous year, a year-on-year surge of 47.76%; the average proportion of overseas base revenue accounting for the total enterprise revenue reached 40.24%.

2025-2026 Annual Overseas Tyre Base Revenue Situation

Nearly 40% of revenue comes from overseas local factories. Core industry growth of nearly 80 billion has firmly secured the overseas capacity as the main engine of performance for the Chinese tyre industry, becoming the core pillar for companies to hedge against domestic involution and resist global trade risks.

Top players widen the gap, distinct tier differentiation

From the industry revenue rankings, the leading enterprises that went overseas first, leveraging their first-mover advantage to complete global layouts, have significantly widened the gap with SME brands, making industry tier differentiation increasingly clear.

Sailing Group leads far with 28.226 billion yuan overseas revenue, a year-on-year increase of up to 104.54%, overseas base revenue accounts for 77.54% of total enterprise revenue, fully releasing the dividends of globalized capacity layout, becoming a benchmark for industry overseas expansion.

Linglong Tires and Zhongce Rubber ranked second and third respectively with 11.93 billion yuan and 10.380 billion yuan. Jiangsu General and Sentinel follow closely, with both overseas revenues breaking 6.3 billion yuan, revenue proportions both exceeding 73%, deeply binding to overseas bases, and globalized layouts continuing to deepen.

Besides the old brand top enterprises steadying themselves, the industry's second tier has full explosive power. Changfeng Tires' overseas revenue skyrocketed 126.87% year-on-year; Haohua Tires and Fumas Tires achieved a breakthrough in overseas revenue from 0 to 1. A new batch of enterprises followed the industry's overseas wave, completed overseas capacity landing, formally joined the global battlefield, making the Chinese tyre overseas matrix increasingly strong.

Behind the Revenue Surge: Blooming Globally

Nowadays, the overseas revenue scale of nearly 80 billion is certainly not the work of one day.

Currently, 26 tyre enterprises in China are setting up overseas factories, and once completed, the number of overseas bases will exceed 40, production bases are distributed across Southeast Asia, North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and other global core markets, completely bidding farewell to the past single export trade model.

Southeast Asia remains the core hotbed for factory construction: Thailand gathers giants like Zhongce, Linglong, Sentinel, General, etc.; Vietnam relies on early industrial foundations to become the core profit town for enterprises like Sailun, Guizhou Tyre, etc.; Cambodia has become a new investment lowland for the industry, with 10 enterprises clustered landing.

At the same time, countries such as Mexico, Egypt, Morocco, Serbia, Russia, etc., have all landed Chinese tyre factories, and the globalized capacity map is fully unfolded.

The overseas logic has completely iterated: Upgrading from the past 'production in China, sales globally' product output to a 'capacity + market' dual-output globalized layout, building factories on-site, producing on-site, supplying nearby, becoming the industry's main business model, and also the core confidence for continuous overseas revenue explosion.

Overseas Bases: Bolstering the Profit Bottom Line

Nowadays, overseas factories have completely reversed their role, transforming from initial cost investment items into the ballast stone that bolsters enterprise profits.

Flipping through the 2025 listed company financial reports, among 11 sample tyre companies, only 2 achieved positive net profit year-on-year growth, domestic market involution intensifies, profits continue to bear pressure, most enterprises' local business increases revenue but not profit.

The core breakthrough for growth against the trend all comes from overseas capacity: 7 enterprises' overseas factories contributed over 25% to the parent company's net profit, and the value of profitability is increasingly highlighted.

Among them, Sailun's two major Vietnam bases contributed 67% of the group's profit with 43% revenue proportion; Guizhou Tyre Vietnam base leveraged 56% profit with only 21% revenue proportion, overseas capacity's profit-making efficiency far exceeds domestic production lines.

Asset proportion data also confirms this deep transformation: General Shares and Sailun Tires overseas asset proportions reached 68.44% and 63.46% respectively, Sentinel and Linglong follow closely, industry average overseas asset proportion exceeds 20%.

After more than a decade of development, overseas bases have completely completed the transformation from 'cost centers' to 'value creation centers', becoming the confidence to cross industry cycles.

After 80 Billion: Overseas Dividend Peaks

But behind the eye-catching performance, the era of the industry's barbaric growth has already ended, and hidden risks and challenges continue to be highlighted.

A large number of enterprises cluster and expand production in core areas like Southeast Asia, homogeneous capacity is released centrally, overseas base early tariffs, cost excess returns are gradually falling back, Blue ocean markets are gradually turning red, industry involution spreads from domestic to overseas.

At the same time, production base transfer cannot permanently avoid trade barriers, the former tax haven, now also faces increasingly strict trade investigations, overseas risks continue to climb.

In addition, the overseas heavy-asset factory construction model poses extremely high requirements for enterprise capital strength, geo-risk control, supply chain management, and localization operation capabilities, the drawbacks of blind expansion and extensive layout gradually emerge, and industry reshuffling accelerates.

Second Half: From Grabbing Land to High-Quality Overseas Expansion

80 billion overseas revenue marks that Chinese tyre overseas expansion has entered the second half. With overseas thresholds constantly increasing, Matthew effect intensifies, top advantages continue to expand, SME brands face increasing pressure, the industry will bid farewell to the land-grabbing model of barbaric expansion, shifting to refined high-quality operations.

Breaking out of low-price capacity involution, industry competition will upgrade to a comprehensive strength contest of channels and brands.

The only way out for the future industry breakthrough is to break free from scale involution, from extensive capacity overseas expansion to high-value brand overseas expansion leapfrog breakout, completely bidding farewell to volume stacking, achieving true high-quality value growth.