Apollo Tyres is reporting further inroads into the Kuwait market with the opening up of it first branded retail outlet in the country. The Apollo Zone is designed to provide customers with an enhanced retail experience and a better feel for the brand and products on display, including passenger car, 4×4 and light truck tyres. The new Apollo Zone is located in the up-market Canada Dry Street of Kuwait, and is operated by Federal General Trading & Contracting Co.
Apollo will introduce its full range of industrial tyres to end users and tyre specialists in Europe with a six-month tour of the continent. Apollo Vredestein specialists will visit eight countries to introduce Apollo branded industrial tyres to as many users and dealers as possible. The company will use a specially designed Volkswagen Crafter, with dual Manchester United branding, to display almost all types, sizes and profiles of tyre during the promotional tour.
Apollo introduced new winter and all-season products in its Alnac range at Reifen 2014, with a full launch reported in Tyres & Accessories’ July issue. The Alnac 4G All Season and Alnac 4G Winter tyres were developed in its Global R&D Centre in the Netherlands, optimised for the European road network.
In UK football circles Apollo Tyres is best known for its Manchester United sponsorship, and the tyre maker now aims to replicate its Manchester experience over in Germany. Apollo Vredestein has signed up as partner to Bundesliga team VfL Wolfsburg for the 2014/15 season, and as national partner for the Wolfsburg men’s team and international partner for the women’s team for the 2015/16 season. In a statement announcing the deal, the company said such a sponsorship is in line with Apollo’s strategy and “should make a significant contribution to promoting the Apollo brand internationally.”
On 6 August the Board of Directors at Apollo Tyres Ltd approved the company’s unaudited results for the first quarter of its 2014-15 financial year. For the three-month period ending 30 June 2014, Apollo Tyres Ltd, on a consolidated level, reported net sales of Rs 32.35 billion (£314.29 million), 1.4 per cent higher than a year earlier. Operating profit rose 13.4 per cent to Rs 4.58 billion (£44.50 million) and net profit was up 37.3 per cent to Rs 2.28 billion (£22.15 million).
Onkar Kanwar has used the opportunity afforded by his company’s 41st Annual General Meeting to share Apollo Tyres’ view of why the planned acquisition of Cooper Tire & Rubber never materialised. The Apollo chairman also spoke on upcoming plans and the market opportunities and challenges the tyre maker has identified.
Dr. Seshu Bhagavathula has been appointed Apollo Tyres Ltd’s new chief technology officer, and at the same time inducted into the company’s Management Board. He will be based at Apollo’s global R&D centre in Enschede, the Netherlands and lead global initiatives in the areas of tyre technology, research and new product development, for both passenger and commercial vehicle tyres. He will be assisted by the tyre maker’s research, technology and design teams across all regions.
During the BRICS summit taking place in Brazil today and tomorrow, Apollo Tyres’ chairman Onkar Kanwar will lead a five-member business delegation and present a report from the BRICS business council to the Brazilian, Russian, Indian, Chinese and South African heads of state. The council has identified five areas where the BRICS countries can explore business opportunities – infrastructure, manufacturing, financial services, energy and green economy and skills development. “Each country can support the other and take part in each other’s respective growth and development programmes,” Kanwar, who is chairman of the BRICS Business Council (India), told Indian news daily the Hindustan Times.
With its sights set on gaining a bigger part of the European tyre market, on 27 May Apollo Tyres introduced two new tyres in Essen. The two new tyres, Apollo Alnac 4G All Season and Apollo Alnac 4G Winter tyres, joined to the existing range of Apollo Alnac 4G tyres being sold in Europe. Both tyres were developed in Apollo Tyres’ Global R&D Centre in the Netherlands and have been optimised to suit the requirements of European drivers and the European road network. While this was going on in the foreground, in the background the company has been involved in complex discussions relating to its much publicised plans to build an Eastern European factory. To this end Tyres & Accessories spoke with chief marketing officer Marco Paracciani. But first the new products…
Apollo Tyres Ltd’s board of directors has approved the expansion of truck-bus radial capacity at the Chennai plant from present levels of 6000 tyres per day to 8900 tyres per day. According to the company this move stems from the fact that the Chennai plant is outperforming projections.
Following news reports that Apollo has chosen Hungary as the location of its new tyre plant, the company has released a statement reiterated its plans and stating that it is “yet to finalise the exact location” for its factory.
Slovakian news sources are reporting that Apollo has chosen Hungary over Slovakia for the site of its new 500 million euro tyre factory. According to the reports, is was “the business environment in Slovakia” pushed the manufacturer towards the other site when choosing from a shortlist of two.
Apollo Tyres’ board has approved plans to build a new tyre factory in “Eastern Europe”, with 500 million euros earmarked for the project. According to the company, the greenfield project will see the tyre manufacturer invest half a billion euros over the next years, funded by “accruals and debt at the company’s European subsidiary”. The capacity is expected to be 16,000 passenger car radial (PCR) tyres a day and 3000 truck and bus radials a day.
Annual and final quarter results for Apollo Tyres’ 2013-14 fiscal year, which ended on 31 March, show a solid increase in net profit for the India-headquartered tyre maker. In the 12 months between the start of April 2013 and the end of March 2014, the company achieved net sales of Rs 133.1 billion (£1.3 billion); this represents year-on-year sales growth of four per cent. Full-year operating profit rose 19 per cent over the previous year to Rs 19.7 billion (£197.2 million), while operating profit margin rose from 12.1 per cent to 14.8 per cent. Net profit jumped 64 per cent year-on-year to Rs 10.1 billion (£101.1 million).
The share prices of India’s leading tyre companies surged in value on Good Friday prior to the Easter weekend. Overall shares of Indian tyre companies shot up by up to 17 per cent, accompanied by heavy volumes reportedly due to “expectations of higher revenue growth during the current fiscal”, according to local news sources. Apollo Tyres, Ceat, Goodyear India, JK Tyre Industries, Balkrishna Industries and TVS Srichakra all rose by between 4 and 17 per cent each on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) during Friday’s trading.
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