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INDIA
Pushpa Retreads to Open Second Plant on Delhi Border
Delhi based Treadsdirect franchisee Pushpa Retreads is expanding, setting-up a second plant on the outskirts of Delhi. The second unit is coming at a location called Badarpur on the Delhi-Faridabad border belt. “Equipment has already arrived from Treadsdirect and is undergoing installation,” informed Vinay Wasuja of Pushpa Retreads. The new plant will have a single six-tyre autoclave and will be functional soon.
The new plant will focus on retreading OTR tyres particularly for JCBs. “Treadsdirect has introduced a new tread design for JCBs in size 1400/25. In the past
Delhi, retreads 400 tyres per month. “We used to retread only the big trailers but we have opened up to include tourist buses and Delhi Transport Corporation- run cluster buses,” informed Wasuja.
The public transport system in Delhi received a major boost when the much-awaited cluster bus service, run by corporate entities on the lines with those in London and Paris, was rolled out in 2011 with fleets of modern low-floor buses. “We have received new accounts for the cluster bus service recently and, on the strength of that, we hope to improve volumes
Vinay Wasuja of Pushpa Retreads
JCB tyres have been retreaded largely by the conventional hot retreading process, but Treadsdirect has introduced it in a precured version,” explained Wasuja.
The upcoming plant is located near Bhatti mines, where JCB’s have wide applications in loading trucks. “The retreading market is opening up in this new JCB segment in the area, and with the introduction of precured tread designs specifically for JCBs, growth prospects are also brighter,” says Wasuja. The plant is also planned to retread truck tyres and is likely to consume around 3 tonnes of tread per month initially. Pushpa Retreads entered in to the retreading business in 2001 with the opening of its Okhla plant. The plant started as an Elgi franchisee and has continued to stay with the Coimbatore based tread maker. The plant in the hub of the biggest industrial area of
by 200 tyres per month in the next 6-7 month period,” stated Wasuja. In the past, the Okhla plant had focused merely on truck tyres. The addition of bus accounts and the expectation of new JCB accounts to be started at the new plant in Badarpur are expected to give a much welcome boost to the business.
The Okhla plant has an eight-tyre chamber and consumes around 5 tonnes of precured tread per month. Commenting on the long association with Treadsdirect, Wasuja added, “Treadsdirect has a good product and is suited to the requirements of the Indian conditions. In bias-ply the tyre gives as much as 45,000 km mileage on Treadsdirect whereas other treads hardly give 25,000 – 30,000 km and in radial Treadsdirect treads give in between 60,000-70,000 km and others only 45,000 – 50,000 km.”
Rupinder Singh and Jagjit Singh of New Highway Tyres
Plant Modernisation at New Highway Tyres
Michelin, Bridgestone, Continental etc. When asked about the challenge in the retreading industry, Rupinder noted, “Punjab is not a cash market, we run the majority of the business
on credit which goes from 10 days to 2 months. We would like to convert it into cash business.”
On the way to the holy city of Amritsar, around 325 km from the Indian capital, New Highway Tyres is located right on the highway in the town of Ludhiana. This industrial town is in the North Indian State of
better control over the quality parameters,” says Jagjit Singh.
The company sources around 5 tonnes of tread rubber per month. Now the company hopes to improve on the volumes to 1,200 tyres per
Punjab, which shares a volatile border with Pakistan. Punjab is also known as India’s wheat bowl and Ludhiana is a famous hosiery and bicycle manufacturing centre, home to some of the largest bicycle making companies in the world like Hero, Avon etc.
New Highway Tyres is one of the long standing dedicated franchisees of Treadsdirect in North India. “We retread around 900-1000 tyres per month and we have been associated with Treadsdirect for the last 25 years, in fact right from the beginning,” said Rupinder Singh of New Highway Tyres. When asked about the reasons for staying with Treadsdirect for so long, Rupinder Singh stressed, “Treadsdirect maintain good quality and have remained a consistent supplier all these years.”
The company had another plant in Baddi, an industrial town in the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh. That unit has been closed around three years back. “We had been using a competitor’s tread in that plant, but the quality of the tread was not good enough, leading to lots of complaints coming from the market, forcing us to close down the plant,” Rupinder explained.
New Highway Tyres decided to never shift to any other tread after the Baddi mishap. “We have never received any complaint from the market all these years. The Treadsdirect franchisee system is quite successful, it restricts the tread to a few companies in the region, which has also led them to have
month from 2015. “We have started certain new routes in the Northern part of (Punjab) state, places like Hoshiyarpur, Bhatinda, Nabha etc, which were not covered as yet,” Rupinder informed.
New Highway Tyres plans to spread out its coverage in more regions of Punjab in the coming years. “Earlier, we used to focus on the business in and around Ludhiana and were more dependent on customers visiting on their own, dropping and picking up their tyres,” Jagjit said. But now the firm is sending vehicles to far-off areas to pick-up and deliver the tyres for retreading. The company is now focusing more on providing service to its customers and has put five vehicles in service to transport the tyres.
New Highway has three autoclaves with two being three-tyre models and one being a larger five-tyre autoclave. Meanwhile the company has no plans to install more autoclaves in the unit as the current capacity is good enough to run the plant to 1,200 to 1,300 tyres. “We are now focusing on running the plant to full capacity,” Rupinder emphasised. However, the retreader is planning to invest in modernising the plant in the next two months. “We are getting the plant online right from picking up the tyre from the customer till it delivers. Our idea is to make each and every operation online at the tip of our fingers whether we are physically inside the unit or not,” Jagjit explained.
The company has also diversified into selling new tyre brands like
46 Retreading Business