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.”
Days after India’s Directorate General of Anti-Dumping published its final findings into truck and bus tyres imported from China and recommended the introduction of anti-dumping duties for certain products, the chairman and managing director of the country’s largest domestic producer of truck and bus radials supported the measure with comments of his own. During his speech at JK Tyre & Industries Ltd’s annual general meeting on 4 August, Dr Raghupati Singhania declared it is “high time” India’s government undertook such a step.
Days after India’s Directorate General of Anti-Dumping published its final findings into truck and bus tyres imported from China and recommended the introduction of anti-dumping duties for certain products, the chairman and managing director of the country’s largest domestic producer of truck and bus radials supported the measure with comments of his own. During his speech at JK Tyre & Industries Ltd’s annual general meeting on 4 August, Dr Raghupati Singhania declared it is “high time” India’s government undertook such a step.
Despite being a latecomer to India’s truck and bus radial (TBR) tyre market, Apollo Tyres says it currently produces one in every four TBR tyres sold in the country. The tyre maker has now stated its intention to “move from leadership to dominance in the fast-growing TBR segment,” and aims to achieve this dominance through capacity increases scheduled to kick in before the end of this year and by introducing several new product lines.
Radialisation of the truck tyre segment in India has been a major subject over the past decade, and JK Tyre and Industries Limited considers itself the “undisputed leader” in this field. The tyre maker produced its first truck and bus radial in 1999 and currently holds the capacity to produce 3.5 million units per annum. On 22 August, the 10 millionth radial truck tyre produced rolled off the line at the company’s Vikrant plant in Mysuru (Mysore).
Production of Michelin truck and bus tyres in India will apparently increase by 45 per cent this year. Financial daily The Economic Times writes that annual output at the company’s plant north of Chennai will increase from 11,000 tonnes to 16,000 tonnes in 2015 in response to increasing demand for radial tyres.
In April, at Chinandega, Nicaragua, Trelleborg presented its radial range of premium agricultural tyres to several important producers in Central America. The event was organised by Emagro, Trelleborg’s distributor for Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala, and generated considerable interest and positive feedback.
