ADDRESSING the growing vehicle market in the country, Indian tyre maker Apollo Tyres’s Chennai facility
has produced a million truck-bus radial (TBR) tyres. The TBR unit went on-stream with an initial production of 250 tyres/ day in 2010 and has been gradually ramped up to now reach 4,000 a day.
Truck-bus radials account for 19% of the total commercial vehicle tyres produced by Apollo, which mirrors the
overall radialisation of 20% in the category in India.
The company expects to speed up the process and hit its next million in the next ten months.
The Chennai unit, which has been operational for around two years, has already produced 3 million passenger
car tyres and currently produces 7,500 passenger vehicle tyres/day.
Meanwhile in the US, at Japanese tyre maker Bridgestone’s Aiken County passenger and light truck tyre facility, it hit the 100 millionth mark. The facility began operations in 1999 and currently employs 95. In 2011, the company announced two phases of expansion for the plant.
In related news, Bridgestone also plans to increase large and ultra-large OTR tyre production capacity at its three-year-old Kitakyushu radial OTR tyre plant by20 tonnes/day by 2014. Its capacity at the end of 2011 was
90 tonnes/day.(PRA)
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