Tyre giant Goodyear today revealed it was making a “substantial investment” into its historic plant in Wolverhampton in a major vote of confidence.

It comes in the week that its iconic Goodyear chimney was demolished at the Stafford Road site.

Around 450 staff still work at the plant, which was once home to more than 4,000. Goodyear said it was investing a six-figure sum into state-of-the-art equipment to improve the quality of its retread truck tyres.

The announcement will allay fears the company was preparing to pull out of Wolverhampton after slowly downgrading its role in the city and selling the site.

It is the third such investment in the past 12 months and comes as Goodyear revealed it was restarting its apprenticeship programme after a gap of five years, when car tyre production stopped in 2003.

Now concentrated on the Bushbury Lane end of the site, the plant employs people making component materials for Goodyear tyre factories across Europe and producing around 100,000 retread truck tyres every year for UK haulage fleets.

Goodyear spokesman James Bailey said the new equipment would help improve the quality of the tyres almost to the level of brand new tyres.