Apollo Tyres to invest rs 1100 crore this year in its plants

KOCHI: Tyre major Apollo Tyres ltd, will be investing rs 1100 crore this year in its 9 plants in India and abroad and was looking at Asia for expansion, a top official of the company said.

'We will be looking at several countries for expansion.. we are looking at Asia, where we see lot of growth potential', Apollo Chairman, Onkar S Kanwar, told reporters here. Without naming the country, he said depending on raw material availablity and expansion of market, a decision would be taken.

During the current fiscal the total capacity of the Indian plants will touch 1450 tonnes, while 200 tonnes each would be added to the South African and European plants.

With regard to its investments this year, Kanwar said rs 900 crore investments would be made in Apollo's five plants in India.

The company would be investing rs 300 crore in its Green field Chennai plant this year, to make it the most efficient, modern and productive tyre plant across Asia. The plant is already producing truck-bus radial and passenger car tyres and four months ago since production commenced, dispatch of consignments to OEMs has also started, he said.

At the Chennai plant, where the total investment till the end of this year would be rs 2300 crore, only Diploma Engineers had been employed as the IT driven machinery requires technical know how and advanced skills. By the end of this year, the plant will produce 16,000 passenger car and 6000 truck-bus radial tyres every day, he said.

Apollo will be investing rs 200 crore in its Baroda plant and also has plans to invest rs 200 crore in Peramabra unit in kerala, which is under lock out since the past two months. It will be investing 30 million dollars at its South Africa plant and 6 million euros for Europe plant, he said.

Describing the Perambra plant as his 'personal baby' kanwar said it pains to see that the unit has been closed since the last two months due to labour problems causing a production loss of 300 tonnes of tyres a day. So far the loss to the company is to the tune of rs 300 crore. The daily loss works out to rs 5 crore, he said. There is heavy absenteeism and the company should be allowed to take secondary labourers, he said. Competition was harsh and there was hardly any margins.

He said workers should resume jobs, 'We want to be fair, but firm', he said adding among all its indian plants, Perambra plant was low on productivity