Apollo Tyres to Halt Indian Radial Production

Apollo Tyres is planning to import radial tyres for luxury cars like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen from the company’s manufacturing facility in South Africa, rediff.com has reported. The local business news source reports that Indian radial production could halt at some point in the coming months.

“We are evaluating the possibility of stopping the production of radial tyres (for luxury cars) from our plant in India and import them from South Africa to meet local demand. This is because the radial tyre market for luxury cars in India is only about 600 tyres a month, which is quite low. Apollo currently manufactures 200 radial tyres a month,” said Sunam Sarkar, chief — strategy and business operations, Apollo Tyres.

Meanwhile, the tyre maker is reportedly planning to stop the production of cross-ply (non-radial or ordinary) truck tyres at the company’s South African facility. Demand will be met from exports of these tyres from Apollo’s manufacturing facilities in India.

“South Africa is not a big market for cross-ply truck tyres. The market there has demand for radial tyres that are used by high-tonnage trucks. The production will be replaced by cross-ply imports from India,” Sarkar told rediff.com. As part of the restructuring, Apollo has replaced the raw-material source bases of Dunlop South Africa, with its own bases in China, Russia and Eastern Europe, the Indian news source added.