Apollo Tyres plans new greenfield plant in Chennai

Chennai: Apollo Tyres, which is in the middle of a Rs 750-crore expansion programme, expects its upcoming project near Chennai to go on stream by June 2009.

Apollo Tyres’ Chief, India Operations, Mr Satish Sharma, told a press conference here that the company aimed to gain leadership position in the market for car tyres.

Towards this end, it is investing about Rs 500 crore in the greenfield plant at Oragadam, near Chennai, and another Rs 150 crore in raising the capacity of its Baroda plant.

Both projects will be completed in the middle of next year. The Chennai plant would be capable of producing 30,000 car tyres a day and the Baroda plant 15,000 a day, which is 5,000 more than now.

Apart from these, the Rs 4,200-crore Apollo Tyres is also investing Rs 100 crore in a plant to produce tyres for off-highway vehicles, he said.

Four-pronged strategy:

Mr Sharma outlined a four-pronged strategy to make Apollo the market leader in car tyres – bring in higher range of products, aggressive pursuit of the OE market, retail chain outlets across the country selling exclusively Apollo tyres and invest heavily in the Apollo brand.

He declined to give any details of the brand-backing efforts, but said the company typically spends about 8 per cent on advertising and market promotion.

Apollo also intends to set up a greenfield plant in Hungary to produce passenger car tyres, which could cost about €200 million.