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THAILAND
Somchai Mongkoladisai knew the purpose of my visit as I had been in touch with him prior to my visit. The visit was opportune as Indra Machinery Co Ltd is going through a lot of restructuring inside the plant. He breaks the news, the largest retreader of truck and bus tyres has stopped retreading tyres by the hot process. “We discontinued retreading truck and bus tyres by the hot cure process two months ago. We are dismantling all the equipment and replacing it with the precure process. We are further expanding our precure capacity in the available space,” informed Somchai Mongkoladisai, Managing Director, Indra Machiner y Co Ltd. The full operation should commence by the end of the year. He further said, “We have two 18 and 14 tyre chambers and we are installing two more 25 tyre chambers. With the operation of the four tyre chambers, our production is likely to be around 250 tyres per day on a single shift.” Indra has also set up another section, where it would retread small forklift tyres.
Initially, Indra entered the market with machinery in 1978 and later forayed into the manufacturing of rubber compound and truck and bus hot cure retreading. “We entered into truck and bus precure retreading in 2000. We started retreading OTR from forklifts to giant sized 3.2 metre full length OTR in 2007. We are the only
one in Thailand doing any OTR retreading by the precure process,” informed Somchai. He added, “We have a big OTR liner range, not everyone has this in Thailand. We can make good money out of it.”
When asked about the reason for stopping hot cure retreading when it still has a sizeable market in Thailand, Somchai quickly added, “The share of the radial tyre is swelling and in another 2-3 years the share of hot cure in the total retreading market will have contracted further. We are just changing with the market trends, we do not see much future in continuing with hot cure retreading. The future is with the precure process and we are expanding in that segment.” According to independent estimates, the radial and bias ply market has an equal share and in last few years the share of bias-ply has been going down and so is the share of the traditional hot cure process. “Interestingly, Thailand has a population of 67 million people and only 55 retreaders to cater for that market. We are very small group, therefore, not fighting much and growing together,” Somchai added.
Despite Indra stopping retreading by the hot cure process, it doesn’t mean that it has turned its back to hot cure altogether. It has some other plans, venturing into new areas of the hot cure process, a niche segment, where no one ventured before in Thailand.
“We are planning to foray into segmented hot cure moulds. We will go back to premium hot cure
moulds. We will do ‘Bead-to-Bead’ retreading in segmented moulds,” confided Somchai. When asked
about the timeline fixed for the new foray, Somchai replied swiftly, “We
are starting it in another 2-3 years.
We are sourcing machiner y from CIMA and plan to do 50 tyres per
day by segmented mould hot cure process.”
Indra is into all round expansion as
it plans to more than double liner production. Currently, it is manufacturing 400 tonnes of liner
per month, which could be
expanded to 1000 tonnes in the next couple of years. “The idea is to project ourselves as a complete service provider to the industr y, offering the industr y ever ything from machiner y to liners, a complete end-to-end solution,” Somchai stated. Currently, the company has 10 customers in Thailand, which may expand to 20 in the next few years as new retreaders are joining the industr y ever y year and Indra is building capacities to target them. “We have three Banbury mixers and will be adding one more next year in order the increase the capacity,” Somchai added. Indra also supplies a small quantity of 40 tonnes of camelback to two customers in Thailand.
Indra also exports liner to Turkey,
Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia
and China. It exports around 80 tonnes of tread rubber every month. Indra plans to focus more on the home market in the years to come. “We are more focused on the domestic market as retreading is developing in Thailand,” Somchai thinks.
The Thai major has invested US$ 500,000 in modernising the plant in the last year, it has bought a computerised buffing machine from Matteuzzi, an extruder from VMI, and shearography from INTACH as part of modernisation drive. Indra also distributes a range of international brands of new tyres like BKT, Apollo, Maxxis, Dunlop, Bridgestone etc., in the Thai market.
Somchai Mongkoladisai, Managing Director, Indra Machinery Co Ltd.