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THAILAND
have never met him in the last five visits.” We might have caught him as we arrived before the scheduled time.
Suppakit Jitmart, Managing Director of Kitkarn Yang Chonburi Co Ltd is a busy man, a son-of-the- soil who runs a huge retreading plant with little knowledge of English. He shakes hands and asked for the purpose of the visit. When I explained, he was a bit surprised that someone could visit him for writing a story on his plant, but as the meeting progressed, he became more at ease, opening up, struggling with English, smiling, laughing, cracking jokes with my Thai driver Joy, who also helped interpreting in English. It came out to be a good news story for the Retreading Business readers around the world. Kitkarn retreads 300 tyres per day by hot and cold processes, breaking down 50:50 by both versions. With the precure version becoming more popular in Thailand, retreaders are ramping up their facilities to meet the growing demand, taking measures like hiking liner production and ordering new equipment. Many retreading companies retain the hot cure production at the previous level but are making progress on the precure side. Kitkarn is also buying equipment to ramp up its precure production. “We have recently bought one 24 tyre chamber and ordered one more from Acten. The new one should arrive in the middle of October,” said Suppakit Jitmart. The company plans to double the precure production to 300 per day with the addition of the new chamber form Acten in October. But it has no plans to hike the hot cure production. “The hot cure market remains static for us, overall it is going down, therefore, we are making no more investments in the hot cure side,” he explained.
Currently, the company has three chambers, two 16 tyre chambers from Newera and One 24 tyre chamber from Acten. Commenting on the expansion, Suppakit said, “The demand for the precure version is increasing and orders are coming in all of the time, therefore, driving the expansion on the precure side.
Kitkarn has about 80 moulds to retread tyres by the hot cure process.
Kitkarn set up the Chonburi based unit about a decade ago, starting with hot cure and then forayed into precure about 5 yrs back. It
then started making its own liner about three years back at the same plant. “We manufacture about 100 tonnes of liner or about 50 tonnes each for both hot and cold cure. We are supplying in the open market but manufacture mainly to feed our own plant,” Suppakit said. The company is also planning to expand liner production next year. “We are planning to buy an Acten press to enable us to hike liner production,” he informed. With plans for procuring a new liner press next year, Kitkarn plans to look beyond the Thai market. “We are planning to get into the export market with the increase in the liner production,” he added.
Liner production at Kitkarn