Shandong Tire Suppliers: How to Find the Real Plant and Check It

Shandong province is the centre of China's tyre industry. Dongying, especially Guangrao county, has dozens of tyre plants, and Qingdao, Weifang and other Shandong cities have many more. Car, light truck, truck and bus, OTR and agricultural tyres from these plants are sold all over the world, often under dozens of different brand names.

A tyre is a safety product, and the importer is usually the one held responsible when it fails. This guide explains how to find out which plant really makes your tyres, how to read the markings and certificates, and what to check before shipment.

Brands and plants

Many tyre brands do not own a factory. A trading company or an overseas importer owns the brand, and one of the Shandong plants makes the tyres. The same plant can make ten brands with the same moulds. That is normal. What matters is which plant it is, what its quality record is, and whether the tyres you buy are the ones that were tested and certified.

Read the sidewall

• DOT code (for the US market): after the letters DOT, the first two or three characters are the plant code. The United States road safety agency publishes a list of plant codes and the plant each belongs to. If the code on the sample does not belong to the factory you were told, you are not buying from that factory.

• Date code: the last four digits of the DOT code give the week and year of manufacture, for example 2526 for week 25 of 2026. Check it on samples and on the shipment, so you are not sold old stock.

• E-mark (for Europe and many other markets): a circled E with a country number and an approval number for UN regulations, such as R30 for car tyres, R54 for commercial vehicle tyres and R117 for noise, wet grip and rolling resistance.

• Size, load index and speed rating: they must match your order and the requirements of your market.

Certificates for your market

• Many countries require their own approval or certification for tyres. Brazil, for example, requires INMETRO certification, and several Gulf, African and Latin American countries have their own schemes.

• Ask for the certificate for your exact sizes and brand, in the name of the plant that makes them. Certificates are often issued per plant and per size range; a certificate for another plant or another size does not cover your tyres.

• Check the certificate number with the issuing body or the national register where one exists. For the EU, tyre labels are also registered in the EU product database (EPREL).

Check the plant

• Registration: scope, address, insured employees, court records and administrative penalties. Some smaller Shandong plants have had financial difficulty in recent years; check for enforcement cases and frozen assets.

• Production: mixing, extrusion, building and curing lines for your type of tyre, not only a warehouse.

• Testing: does the plant have its own lab for compound and finished tyre tests, such as dimensions, strength, bead unseating and high-speed and endurance tests? Ask for recent test records for your sizes.

• Uniformity and balance checks on the line, and X-ray inspection for truck and bus radial tyres.

Before shipment

• Check brand, size, load and speed markings, DOT or E-mark, and date codes on a sample from each size.

• Look for visual defects: bubbles, cracks, foreign matter, flash and uneven tread.

• Check labels and stickers required in your market, and the loading pattern in the container.

• Count tyres per size against the packing list.

Questions to send the supplier first

1. Which plant makes these tyres? Please give its full Chinese name and unified social credit code.

2. What is the DOT plant code and the E-mark approval number for these sizes?

3. Which certificates for our country cover this brand and these sizes, in whose name, and with which numbers?

4. Can we have recent test records for these sizes?

5. Will the tyres be made after our order, and what date code will they carry?

See also how to check certificates from China and our Shandong supplier case.

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LocalAuditChina is an independent verification service, not a certification body. Check your market's tyre approval rules with the competent authority.