Bridgestone Middle East and Africa (BSMEA), the regional headquarters for Japanese tyre manufacturer Bridgestone Corporation, has opened a new 230,000 sqft facility – Bridgestone Park – in Dubai. Located in Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA), Bridgestone Park features a FirstStop retail store, truck and bus tyre service centre (BTTC) and Bandag learning center. The three facilities will be used as models to educate and train regional business partners as these new Bridgestone brands and services are introduced across the region.
FirstStop is Bridgestone’s pan-European network of passenger tyre and auto care service centers which consists of over 2,000 stores in Europe. The FirstStop shop at Bridgestone Park will be the retail brand’s model store as it is rolled out to new markets in the Middle East and Africa. The shop will stock a full range of tyres and auto-care products, in addition to offering tyre services – which include alignment, balancing, repair, and rotation – and auto-care services including oil/filter change, and battery change.
The BTTC facility caters to the maintenance and service of commercial vehicles. The Bandag learning center houses state-of-the-art equipment that will be used to provide training on the retreading process.
“The investment in this stunning new facility gives Bridgestone the opportunity to provide our regional customers with new and enhanced services and to train our staff to deliver the highest possible standards of customer care. Bridgestone Park will become a new, strategic and state-of-the-art hub for BSMEA to enhance our employees’, partners’, and distributors’ skills and knowledge, in order to serve our customers and communities better,” says Shoichi Sakuma, president, Bridgestone Middle East and Africa.