Page 37 - RB-66-13-3

INDONESIA
largest city in Indonesia and is also the capital of West Java province. It is located around 140 km south east of Jakarta.
With an increasing market preference for the precure version, the company decided to commence the cold process in its factory. “We have observed that demand for the precure version has been growing in the last few years and that has forced us to start the cold process,” concedes Rachman. The company retreads around 4,000 tyres per month and consumes around 20 tonnes of precure liner. “Currently, we produce precure liner for our own consumption,” he added. The new plant caters for the Surubaya retreading factory but will later on supply the wider market. “We have plans to supply in the Indonesian market but of late many local brands have entered the market creating fierce competition,” he said. The new liner plant started functioning in early 2013. Interestingly, it has been observed that there is hardly a company that only manufactures liner. Most of the liner makers also have retreading plants. They feed their own plants and supply the liner in the open market too. With growing competition, the margins are decreasing. Therefore, most of the players believe it is a good business move to have their own liner plants as well retreading factories to control production costs. Once the retreading plants become volume driven, they also prefer to have in-house liner production. Grand Prix Indoagung runs a majority hot cure production. It sources around 30-40 tonnes of camelback every month from a local supplier. “The hot process has been declining consistently over the past few years,” he added. When asked about plans for stopping the hot process in the near future, he said, “We will continue with the hot process while shifting towards the cold version in due course.” It has one 24 tyre chamber and more than 30 presses for the hot version.
The company also has plans to foray into OTR retreading at some later stage. “Java has a small OTR market and we are looking at its prospects in Surubaya and in the adjoining areas. It is in our plan but we will take some time to get into OTR retreading,” said Rachman.
Commenting on the retreading industry in general, Rachman said, “Retreading has become very competitive in the last five years as more people are getting into retreading. Surubaya is a big market and is home to about ten functional retreading plants.” Though the Surubaya market is one of the biggest markets in Eastern Indonesia it is not easy to get good casings for retreading. “The market is full of Chinese tyre brands and they are not good for retreading. People prefer new Chinese tyres over retreading,” he argued. Moreover, overloading is also damaging the tyres as trucks are carrying 3-4 times more over their capacity, in addition to which bad road conditions do not help.
Supranusa to Set-Up Two Retreading Plants by Early 2014
Surabaya has become one of the largest cities in South East Asia, mainly due to being the main seaport and commercial centre in the Eastern region of Indonesia. The cargo traffic due to the seaport’s proximity made it really difficult to reach any factory in the industrial area after 2 pm. The big trucks loaded with containers were moving all around jamming almost every signal on the way to Supranusa Rubber located in the outskirts of Surabaya, in a place called Krian, in Sidoarjo in the Jawa Timur Province. Surabaya is a second largest city after Jakarta and is the capital of the province of East Java. The driver almost took two hours to travel around 10 kms to
reach Supranusa unit due to a big jam created by trucks everywhere, for a short while it looked like everyone was moving on trucks.
Supranusa Rubber is a leading manufacturer and one of the biggest exporters of rubber products in Indonesia. The company forayed into tread making quite recently, in 2009. “We retread tyres by the precure and the traditional hot processes. We also make tread liner for our own consumption as well as for the export market,” said Rocky Hendrawan W, Managing Director, Supranusa Rubber. Supranusa manufactures around 150 tonnes of tread rubber every month, much below the