Bridgestone Corp. said Tuesday that it will step up production at a fourth plant in Japan to more quickly meet the demand created by the recall of 6.5 million tires that its U.S. unit, Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., announced earlier this month.

The top Japanese tire maker said it will add its Hikone plant in Shiga Prefecture to the three domestic plants, raising the number of replacement tires produced in Japan to 650,000 by December.

Last week, the company said it would produce a total of 450,000 replacement tires at its Tosu plant in Saga Prefecture, its Hofu factory in Yamaguchi Prefecture and its Nasu plant in Tochigi Prefecture and airlift them to the U.S. to help Bridgestone/Firestone in its efforts to deal with the massive recall.

The Hikone plant is expected to churn out 80,000 tires, while the Tosu and Hofu plants will also boost production, it said.

Bridgestone/Firestone, under fire for not acting quickly enough to replace the tires allegedly linked to traffic accidents that resulted in 62 deaths, is already doubling its production.

Bridgestone said it airlifted some 2,000 replacement tires to the U.S. from last Wednesday through Sunday. It plans to use chartered flights as well as regular cargo flights from early September to speed up the shipments.

Bridgestone/Firestone has so far replaced around 1 million tires.

Earlier this month, Bridgestone/Firestone announced the recall of 6.5 million tires, namely the 15-inch Firestone radial ATX, radial ATX-11 and Wilderness AT brands. All three were made in the U.S. and are used primarily on Ford Motor Co.'s vehicles.

Of the 62 highway deaths being investigated in connection with the tires, most involved Ford's sport-utility Explorer vehicle.