India
A couple of weeks after Apollo Tyres unveiled car tyres containing 75% sustainable materials, JK Tyre & Industries has seen Apollo’s 75 and raised it 5. The company has produced a passenger car radial with 80% recycled and renewable materials – and says it will offer such a range “in due course.”
In June 2020, India’s government introduced new legislation that significantly limited tyre imports into the country, with companies intending to do so requiring a license. As one of many manufacturers affected by this rule, Michelin scaled back its imports of passenger tyres and limited these to selected products for performance cars. Further expansion in India will require local production, and the question for Michelin doesn’t seem to be if, but rather when.
World Bank Group member IFC is investing US$30 million in JK Tyre & Industries. These funds will part-finance the expansion of capacities and integration of resource-efficient technologies into TBR & PCR manufacturing, leading to a more than 10% increase in radial tyre production. IFC gains a 5.6% stake in the tyre maker.
A new managing director and chief executive officer will take the helm of Ceat Ltd. from 1 April 2023. The Indian tyre maker has appointed current chief operating officer Arnab Banerjee as successor to Anant Goenka in both positions for a term of two years. On this date, Goenka will become Ceat’s vice chairman and in this role will lead parent company RPG Enterprises into “new business segments.”
Yokohama is investing US$82 million in expanding the annual passenger car tyre production capacity of its Yokohama India Pvt. Ltd. (YIN) from 2.8 million to 4.5 million tyres. The new capacity will be installed within premises of the Visakhapatnam plant in eastern India and is scheduled to start production in the fourth quarter of 2024. At that point, the factory will be capable of building passenger car tyres up to 22 inches.
A fortnight ago, BKT announced its aim of increasing production by around 67% and achieving an annual turnover of US$2 billion in 3 years. The company’s Bhuj facility in western India is key to these plans and will soon manufacture numerous new products, including off-highway truck tyres, agro-forestry radials, tracks and an expanded mining tyre portfolio. BKT shares news of these and other plans.
Titan International, Inc. has reported record turnover and profitability during the 2022 financial year. While the US-based manufacturer of OTR tyres and wheels increased its net sales by 21.9% to US$2.2 billion, income from operations jumped by more than 141% to $205.8, almost doubling the return on sales to 9.5%.
In its most recent quarterly report, US-based off-highway tyre manufacturer Titan International, Inc. reports owning 64.3% of Russian tyre maker Voltyre-Prom, with the Russian Direct Investment Fund the remaining shareholder. Yet this connection with Russia hasn’t stopped Titan raising its voice against indirect imports of Russian petroleum products into the USA. Together with the United Steelworkers union, Titan has even sent a letter to Joe Biden.
Apollo Tyres Ltd has launched its Vredestein-branded Pinza AT tyres in India. Dubbed “dedicated and premium tyres for SUVs in India”, the Vredestein Pinza AT products feature “all-weather grip”, “excellent stability” and are said to deliver “comfortably rugged” and “quieter rides”, according to the company.
In order to satisfy increasing local demand, Yokohama Rubber is expanding passenger car tyre production capacity in India. It will invest US$82 million in its Yokohama India manufacturing and sales subsidiary to increase capacity from 2.8 million tyres per annum to 4.5 million tyres.
Off-highway tyre specialist BKT has quantified its growth ambitions, and the figures are ambitious. Tyrepress reported yesterday that the manufacturer’s capacity across all manufacturing facilities will reach 360,000 tonnes later in 2023. But BKT has big plans for its “most strategic plant” in Bhuj and has announced its goal of harnessing this facility to achieve annual tyre production of 600,000 tonnes in 3 years. It also intends for turnover of US$2 billion a year by the end of this period.
Late in 2021, BKT announced operations would continue at its 1988-inaugurated Waluj factory following the commissioning of a plant originally intended to replace it. A year down the track and BKT reverted to its initial plan and is now redirecting the capital expenditure of Rs 3.5 billion (£35.2 million; US$42.4 million) previously approved for modernising the old plant to the newer Waluj facility to “bring in economies of scale.”
Apollo Tyres aims for at least 40 per cent of the raw materials it uses by 2030 to be sustainable, and to show what it can already achieve the tyre maker has produced an agricultural tyre containing 75 per cent sustainable materials. Although just a concept, Apollo is evaluating the product’s potential commercialisation.
The European passenger car and light truck tyre (PCLT) import market recovered substantially from its bout of Long Covid in the second half of 2022 as the benefits of local versus remote production took an unexpected hit. A perfect storm of significantly lower freight costs and high European energy costs nudged the dial on the relative competitiveness of imports and domestic PCLT tyre production in the second half of 2022. Looking at the European PCLT tyre market through the prism of imports, leading sector analyst Astutus Research shares with Tyres & Accessories its data demonstrating the effects of a rapidly changing market context. The latest Astutus Research briefing, ‘Supply Dynamics in the European PCLT Tire Industry to 2028’, priced at £995 is available now on Tyrepress.
Apollo Tyres Ltd. maintained its market share within Europe’s passenger car and light truck (PCLT) market in the three months to 31 December 2022 (Q3 FY2023) despite declining approximately 14 per cent year-on-year in this market. The tyre maker primarily attributes this negative growth to high channel inventory, a mild winter and the economic slowdown.
If you would like the latest news from the Chinese tyre industry in Chinese, visit our partner site TyrepressChina.com. Or click below to continue on Tyrepress.
Yokohama
Apollo Tyres
Astutus Research