Apollo To Build New Radial Plant

India’s second-largest tyre manufacturer, Apollo Tyres, is to invest 1.1 billion Rupees (24.7 m Euro) in a plant to make radial truck and bus tyres.

The plant will be sited at Baroda, in Gujarat, next to an existing Apollo factory and will use technology from Continental, with whom Apollo has an existing collaboration. The company also has two more tyre plants in India, plus another factory producing tubes.Apollo claims a 25 per cent share of India’s bus and truck tyre market and this sector accounts for around 70 per cent of India’s tyre industry, which is worth an estimated 100 billion Rupees (2.

25 bn Euro) annually. While radials account for around 65 per cent of car tyres sold in India, the incidence of radialisation in the truck and bus tyre sector is an extremely low 2 per cent. The reasons for this are manifold; a poor road infrastructure, lack of power steering in vehicles and a predominance of two-axle vehicles all mitigate against the use of radials.

So why build a radial plant? Apollo believes that increased investments in the road network and a growing use of multi-axle trucks will see the incidence of radial use rise sharply and the company wants to be ready to meet this expected growth in demand. On the OE side, India’s commercial vehicle sales have fallen over the past two years and truck and bus tyre production has dropped 2.6 per cent over the last eleven months, to an average monthly output of just under 700,000 tyres.