The radialisation in India’s commercial vehicle and off-highway tyre market has slowed down but is still progressing, says Apollo Tyres. During an earnings call earlier this month, chief financial officer Gaurav Kumar commented that radialisation in the market as a whole has “slowed down slightly from earlier expectations.”
Passenger car tyre production and capacity at Apollo Tyres’ Gyöngyöshalász plant in Hungary has steadily grown over the past two years. These respectively reached 2.1 million and almost 3 million units a year by the end of March 2019, and Apollo is still ramping up in Hungary. It’s a different story in Enschede, some 700 miles to the west, but Apollo Tyres says it isn’t preparing to end car tyre production in the Netherlands any time soon.
With the ramp-up of its plant in Hungary, Apollo Tyres Ltd. is growing in Europe. The company also has ambitious plans in its home market of India – it aims to become the country’s leading tyre maker, and is investing to do so. Total investments over the period between 2015 and 2021 approach £900 million.
Truck tyre production at Apollo Tyres’ factory in Gyöngyöshalász, Hungary will begin before the end of September. According to Gaurav Kumar, chief financial officer of Apollo Tyres Ltd., production is scheduled to start during the July to September quarter and the ramp-up of truck tyre production will then continue and reach a maximum capacity of 1,200 pieces per day by the end of March next year.
During a conference call held this month, the chief financial officer of Apollo Tyres Ltd. confirmed that passenger car tyre production at the Apollo Vredestein plant in Enschede, the Netherlands would be reduced as capacity for these products grows in the company’s new, more cost-competitive facility in Gyöngyöshalász, Hungary. However, this trend shouldn’t be seen as a transfer of capacity, as the plan for Enschede going forwards is for its continued utilisation, with greater emphasis placed upon other segments.
Following the start of production at its Gyöngyöshalász plant in Hungary last quarter, Apollo Tyres is on its way to almost doubling European passenger car tyre production capacity over the coming year and a half. Speaking with analysts and investors last week after the release of Apollo’s FY2018 financial results, chief financial officer Gaurav Kumar confirmed that the facility in Hungary is expected to reach a daily capacity of 16,000 car tyres by the second half of FY2019 – in other words, sometime between September next year and the end of March 2019. This will give Apollo Tyres a total daily capacity of up to 35,000 passenger car tyres at its two European plants – and more than a third of output in Gyöngyöshalász may be earmarked for OEM customers.
Apollo Tyres’ Enschede plant in the Netherlands has a 200 tonne per day capacity and currently operates at more than 90 per cent capacity utilisation, and to supplement output within the region the tyre maker is currently erecting a brand new factory in Hungary. During a conference call last week, Gaurav Kumar, chief financial officer at Apollo Tyres Ltd., confirmed that the company has planned a capital expenditure of €200 million for the project during the current financial year (1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017).
A replacement has been found for Raj Banerji, who resigned as Apollo Tyres’ chief financial officer after less than two months in the job. Gaurav Kumar, previously group head of corporate strategy and finance, has taken on the role and will oversee Apollo Tyres’ global accounts, finance, taxation and investor relations from the company’s headquarters in Gurgaon, India. He reports to vice-chairman and managing director, Neeraj Kanwar.
