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INDONESIA
Abdullah Sami of CV Rapi
K Rachman S, Director, PT Grand Prix Indoagung
process of retreading next year as the hot cure business is in decline,” said Sonny Karyadi of Karya. The small retreading company was retreading on average 400 tyres each month by the hot cure process till last year. “However, the market has gone down, affecting our business, and production dropped to 300 tyres per month from the beginning of the year,” Sonny replied.
This was Retreading Business’s second visit to the plant after a gap of almost six years. When asked about the reason of drop in the volumes, Sonny said, “With the automobile boom in the Indonesian market, people prefer to move around more in their personal vehicles, mostly two wheelers, instead of using public transport, resulting in a lower number of tyres coming for retreading. Moreover, we are only curing tyres by the hot process, whereas demand today is more for the precure version.” The bad condition of carcasses is also a reason for the slowdown in the retreading sector. “Chinese tyres are not good for retreading and the
market is flooded with these kind of tyres. It is really difficult to find suitable casings for retreading these days,” he said.
K ar ya has got seven tyre chambers for the hot process and it sources rubber from the Semarang based tread liner maker, Indo Rubber. Semarang is around 300 km from Bandung and is in the north coast
of the island of Java. It is a provincial capital and the largest city in Central Java. Karya has no immediate plans to scrap the hot cure process. “We will continue to retread tyres by the hot process after introducing the precure process
next year,” he clarified.
Karya hopes that the market will bounce back in the next couple of years. The firm has its maximum production in the months of November and December due to the holiday season. “When people move around, this leads to more movement of transport and that is good for the retreading business,” he explained. Bandung has around 13 small retreading plants.
place to live in with cool breeze entering from the car window. Suddenly, Sari pointed a finger towards a patch of land near coast and said a small fishing town was there with lot of homes, not a single house is left. It looks as if no-one had ever lived there even before the tsunami.
After a short while our car stopped in front of the only retreading plant in Banda Aceh, which was also submerged during the tsunami. “We have two plants, the oldest plant – 1 in North Aceh, while the second was opened after the tsunami in 2008,” explained Abdullah Sami of CV Rapi Vulcanisir & Service Ban. The Northern Aceh plant retreads 300 tyres per month, while the main Aceh plant retreads 1000 tyres per month. Both plants are precure retread plants.
CV Rapi is planning further expansion by building another plant at a place called Meulaboh next year. Meulaboh is about 245 km South East of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh Province. It was amongst the hardest hit areas by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that lead to the tsunami. It was estimated that one third of Meulaboh’s population was reported perished in the tsunami. “We will set-up a plant to retread
1000 tyres per month in 2014,” said Abdullah. Currently, CV Rapi retreads only the truck tyres but in the new plant it plans to start OTR retreading too.
It sources tread from the Medan based company, Swallow. “We source tread liner for our own two plants with the rest to be sold in the market,” he added. CV Rapi’s plants each cover an area of around 300 km. The resource-rich Aceh has substantial natural resources including oil and natural gas. The gas reserves are estimated to be the largest in the world. “One of our clients is Pertamina, the state owned oil and natural gas mining company,” Abdullah informed. The main Aceh facility has one 22 tyre chamber, whereas, the North Aceh plant has two 4 and 5 tyre chambers. Both the plants have imported equipment from France and Brazil.
Interestingly, CV Rapi is facing no competition at the moment but the scenario may change in the near future. “We have a good clientele and there is absolutely no problem in the business. But of late a few other companies from other regions have started collecting tyres in Banda Aceh for retreading.”
CV Rapi to Build Third Retreading Plant in 2014
My Lion Airlines aircraft touched the tarmac of Sultan Iskandar Muda International Airport, about 13.5 km from the Banda Aceh, located at the north-western tip of Indonesia at the
come back to take my onward flight to another city, Medan. Banda Aceh is the provincial capital and largest city in the province of Aceh Indonesia, located on the island of Sumatra. Sari
Indoagung Precure Plant Goes Operational
The traditional hot process of retreading is still common in Indonesia. Although the Indonesian retreading industry is fast moving towards lapping-up the now popular precure system, still most of the bigger players retain the traditional process. It has been observed that some of the key players have only recently shifted towards the cold process with a large part of their operation still dedicated to the
hot process for retreading. Surabaya based retreading company, PT Grand Prix Indoagung, has only recently adopted the precure process and will soon start manufacturing liners by setting-up a new factory. “We have built a new unit for manufacturing precure liners, located around 100 km from Bandung,” informed K Rachman S, Director, PT Grand Prix Indoagung. Bandung is the third
mouth of river Krueng Aceh. This correspondent stepped out of the aircraft and walked inside the main building, which leads to the exit door, where the host, Abdullah Sami, the owner of the only retreading plant in Banda Aceh, was waiting with his daughter, Sari, who knew good English and served as translator during my visit.
We shook hands and rushed to his car as I have to carry out the plant visit, which is inside the city and
informed me that the greater part of the town was devastated due to the tsunami and was later re-built. More than 100,000 people lost their lives and they were fortunate enough to be in the part of Banda Aceh which was unaffected.
With greenery all-around and no big skyscrapers like Jakarta, one does not realise at first that the town was the worst affected during the tsunami and once hogged the headlines of the world press. It seems it is a good
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