Continental Tire Canada has picked a poignant moment to officially open its 400,000ft2 distribution warehouse in Oshawa, Ontario. While the row over North American tariffs on Chinese tyre imports continued to rage, last week John Gray, Mayor of Oshawa, Mario La Barbera, President of Pival International, Oliver Winschiers, General Manager Continental Tire Canada, and Dominique Lacroix, Director of Logistics Continental Tire North America, led an opening ceremony for the new facility following a multi-year partnership contract between Continental and logistics provider Pival International.
The new facility, in which Pival has invested $22m, consolidates two separate Continental facilities in Mississauga and Brantford and will hold up to 500,000 tyres. It will also accommodate automotive parts. According to Winschiers, the consolidation is an important step in meeting the demands of growth the company is seeing in the country.
Pival is providing tyre and parts handling for GM Oshawa and Ford Oakville, as well as Honda Aliston, Chrysler Brampton and Toyota Cambridge. Transport to those plants is being handled by Continental.
The tyres will be supplied on 20 trailer calls a day and the 52-dock facility also features multimodal access, including two indoor rail tracks. The centre can accommodate 120 containers and trailers in its storage yard which is monitored by security cameras and features card scanning access.
“We currently receive OEM autoparts from various suppliers in North America including Mexico,” Mario Le Barbera told Automotive Logistics. “We are looking into receiving Continental tires by rail in high cube boxcars. Rail is more environmentally sustainable than shipping over the road.”
Continental will use its WAMOS inventory management system, which supports the latest stock availability in real-time through its online application ContiLink. Meanwhile, Pival will provide a best-in-class WMS RF capable system with hand held scanners.
