South Korea's leading tire maker Hankook Tire said Monday that its accumulated tire production topped 1 billion units.

The company became the first South Korean tire maker that produced more than 1 billion tires, and it took only seven years to double the 500 million units produced as of 2004, according to the statement sent by Hankook.

Hankook, founded in 1942, started full-fledged tire output in 1979 with a plant that had a production capacity of 1.5 million units per year. The company added a factory with a production capacity of 10 million units in 1991, before building two plants in China in 1999 and one factory in Hungary in 2007.

The tire maker, which can mass produce 90 million tires per year as of November, aimed to manufacture 100 million units annually, Hankook said.

Source:xinhuanet