Apollo’s Board of Directors has recently green-lighted an investment of USD 685 million over four years to build a car and truck tire plant in eastern Europe, but until now the Indian tire maker had not released details about possible sites.
Ceneviz, speaking with Tire Business at the Reifen show in Essen, said Apollo hopes to make a final decision in the next two to three weeks.
The company’s board said it envisions a plant with capacity for 16,000 passenger and 3,000 truck tires a day at full capacity. That equates to about 900,000 metric tonnes of processed rubber a year, he noted. The capacity in the first phase will be about 250,000 tons.
Apollo’s search for a plant started with 11 sites, Ceneviz said. The selection criteria comprise labour skills, costs, raw materials and infrastructure, along with investment incentives offered by the nations and/or regions being considered.
The plant will support Apollo’s “ambitious and aggressive” growth strategy in Europe, according to Marco Paracciani, global chief marketing officer, who said the group had recently “seen a bottoming out of a negative trend and [where] Apollo has outpaced the market.”
Apollo had intended to build a EUR 300 million manufacturing plant in Gyöngyös in 2008, but the plan was dropped. The last straw was that the town prepared to call a referendum to find out whether folks wanted Apollo there or not. The company said they would not go anywhere they are not welcome. The plant would have been Apollo’s first green field manufacturing unit outside India and would have created about 900 jobs.