Dundee tyre factory to be secured by RSA grant

FIRST Minister Alex Salmond is today expected to announce that the future of tyre maker Michelin’s plant in Dundee has been secured as the French company prepares to unveil a “significant investment” in the factory.

The company is understood to have received a regional selective assistance (RSA) grant from the Scottish Government.

The tyre maker remained tight-lipped last night over the size of the grant but said that, along with its own investment in the plant, it would “create a substantial number of jobs and safeguard hundreds more”.

Michelin revealed in May that the size of its planned injection of cash into the Scottish facility would depend on how much money the company would be able to secure through RSA.

About 750 people are employed at the firm’s site in Dundee, where the company makes car tyres. Tyre for trucks and buses is made at a factory at Ballymena in Northern Ireland, where about 1,100 staff work.

Eric Le Corre, managing director of Michelin UK, will take the First Minister on a tour of the Dundee site, where he will meet the firm’s apprentices.

The factory opened in 1972 and produces more than seven million tyres each year.