By Connie Sage

Correspondent

EDENTON, N.C.

Colony Tire's $2.5 million expansion of its Michelin truck tire retread manufacturing plant will open today. The expansion doubles its production capacity to 100,000 tires a year.

On May 12, Colony Tire bought three Tire Centers Inc. stores in Norfolk, Newport News and Belle Haven on the Eastern Shore, said Charles A. Creighton, CEO of the Edenton-based company.

Colony Tire will stop production at its 52,000-square-foot retread plant in the Norfolk Industrial Park in about a month, he said.

That work will move to Edenton, and the Norfolk operation will be converted to a wholesale distribution site that also will continue to offer consumer tire sales and service.

The number of employees at the Edenton retread plant could double to 30 once the new operation is at full capacity, Creighton said.

"That's good for Edenton," he said. "At the same time, it's not bad for Norfolk if we put in a wholesale center" because it will employ a dozen people, about the same number who now work in the retread plant.

For two weeks, 30 workers have been installing eight truckloads of Michelin automated machinery and equipment in a 22,000-square-foot Edenton plant, Creighton said.

Colony has more than 500 employees at its 40 stores in northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. I t is in Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk and Newport News.