In its annual winter tyre performance survey, German motoring publication AutoBild narrows a wide field of 49 winter tyres and two all-season tyres with wet and snow braking measurements before conducting a full test of a range of characteristics. 19 tyres made it through to the 2015/16 season test, conducted using the tyre size 185/60 R15.
At an award ceremony held recently in Bangkok, Thailand, the Asian Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) announced Apollo Tyres as the winner of the ASIAN CSR Awards 2015 under the Health Enhancement category. Apollo Tyres was chosen as the category winner from 134 entries from 12 Asian countries. Thailand’s former deputy prime minister, M R Pridiyathorn Devakula, presented the award to Sunam Sarkar, president and chief business officer at Apollo Tyres Ltd.
Coinciding with the start of the 2015/16 European football season, various tyre manufacturers have continued the step up in sponsorship involvement with some of Europe’s biggest clubs. Continuing the trend Tyres & Accessories observed last year, bigger, broader deals are expanding tyres’ role in football, and increasing the prominence of brands outside the traditional premium names.
Apollo secured 300 million euros financing for its Greenfield plant in Hungary, on which construction started in April 2015, bringing total investment to 475 million euros. The first product is expected to roll out in early 2017 and the facility will create approximately 1,000 jobs in the country. Commenting on the closure of the financing, K. Prabhakar, managing director of Apollo Tyres, Hungary said, “We thank our consortium partners who provided appropriate solutions to the specific financing needs for the project and facilitated a smooth execution.”
It started two years ago with just two markets – India and the UK – and by the start of 2015, Apollo Tyres’ association with Manchester United Football Club covered 69 countries in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. The tyre maker now reports that it has extended its relationship with Manchester United even further; it now includes the whole of Africa, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Brunei.
Some 300 million euros in financing have been secured for the factory Apollo Tyres is building in Hungray. This financing comes from a consortium of banks made up of ABN AMRO Bank NV, Magyar Export-Import Bank, Raiffeisen Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and UniCredit Bank Hungary.
Only quite recently Apollo Tyres Ltd gave word that truck and bus tyre production capacity at its factory Chennai, India would increase from 6,000 to around 9,000 tyres per day, yet the company has now announced a further truck and bus tyre capacity boost for the plant. A filing submitted to the BSE following a meeting of Apollo’s Board of Directors on 11 August shares the tyre maker’s plan of outlaying a capital expenditure of Rs 12 billion (£118.7 million) to further expand truck and bus radial capacity in Chennai from the currently planned 8,900 tyres per day to 12,000 tyres per day.
Unaudited financial results for the first quarter of Apollo Tyre Ltd’s 2015-16 financial year were released yesterday, and these show a year-on-year rise in the company’s operating and net profits despite lower net sales.
Apollo has commented on the recent positive results achieved by its Alnac 4G All Season tyre in the recent Auto Bild Allrad test. The tyre was ranked first in the mass premium category (second overall), offering superior performance and value for money.
On 22 July 2015 Apollo Tyres Apollo Amazer 4G Life, especially for the Indian market. Its unique selling points? The tyre has been developed jointly by the company’s global R&D centres in Chennai, India and the Netherlands and offer customers the promise of 100,000kms of wear and beyond.
Apollo Tyres has received recognition for its ‘Air Master by Vredestein’ spoiler. The invention was given a DKG Product Award in the ‘Technical Rubber Products and Tyres’ category at this year’s International Rubber Conference in Nuremberg, Germany.
Rubber Asia has announced it will honour “those who have made outstanding contributions to the rubber industry” at the Asian Latex Conference (ALC) 2015 and India Rubber Summit & Dinner (IRSD) 2015. The two events are organised on consecutive days on 10, 11 (ALC), and 12 (IRSD) September in Kochi, India.
Apollo Tyres has appointed J. Walter Thompson Company as its global creative agency. According to Apollo, the agency won after a multi-agency pitch. J. Walter Thompson Company replaces Apollo Tyres’ earlier agency, The Brooklyn Brothers.
A couple of months ago we discussed the “restructuring” of relatively large and modern Chinese manufacturer Deruibao Tire. Back then, Qingdao Doublestar was top of the list of firms connected with an acquisition/cooperation/merger rescue orchestrated by the local government. A month later government-owned ChemChina announced that it was buying Pirelli. This latter point has been covered in some depth in the pages of Tyres & Accessories, especially in our April edition. The Pirelli/ChemChina story will no-doubt garner more attention as the very complex outworkings of the deal are walked out, but what remains of interest is the way in which both the local Chinese market and the global industry are engaged in a period of both parallel and inter-connected consolidation.
Following their release in the UK and Thailand, Apollo Tyres’ home country of India has become the third market to receive the company’s dual Apollo and Manchester United-branded tyres. The tyres are available in a 15-inch rim size from Apollo’s existing Alnac 4G range, and sold through select Apollo outlets.
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