Hankook Tire, South Korea’s largest tire maker, said Tuesday that it has scaled back production due to its record inventory glut.

The company said the number of unsold tires reached a staggering 660,000, the highest since the company was founded in 1941. The total is equal to 8.5 percent of the 7.75 million tires it makes in a month.

The surge in unsold tires comes as demand failed to pick up as originally anticipated, and because the company moved to expand its production capability both at home and abroad.

Hankook has seven tire production factories in South Korea, China, Indonesia and Hungary.

“Expectations that demand will pick up after March were misplaced,” a corporate source said. He added that if things do not improve soon, there may be a need to curb production even at the company’s South Korean plants.

By region, the size of inventory was the greatest in its Indonesian operations, where numbers reached 234,150, or 35.5 percent of the total. (Yonhap)