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INDIA
Jospeh Kurian, Director with Scaria Joseph (sitting), MD, United Rubber Pvt Ltd.
Jhagadia Taluk in the Bharuch District in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The company is known for manufacturing and marketing high quality retreading material.
In order to give a major push to its export activities in the African market, the company is working on a strategy of getting into direct sales. “We are planning to operate independently with a marketing person in the region to take care of our sales,” he said. The South African dealer is dealing in range of products with tread rubber as very small part of its business.
The company is facing challenges in
its main export market of the Middle East, where currently it ships a major part of its production. “Low quality cheap tread is widely available in that market, besides which long credit of up to six months is routinely offered, which poses one of the biggest challenges to our product in the Middle East,” Joseph complained.
The Middle East market has been fast emerging as dumping ground for low cost Chinese tyres. The Chinese companies are buying warehouses in the UAE to supply cheap tyres to the whole Middle Eastern market. “A new Chinese tyre costs around DH
600 compared to a Michelin brand tyre, which costs DH 1,800. A good retread costs around DH 530. But due to the market being flooded with cheap Chinese tyres, the casings are being retreaded for DH 350,” informed Kurian. The retreaders as well as tread makers are struggling in the market these days, forcing few plants to close down their operations in the recent past.
The Middle Eastern market is also coping with a slowdown during the past couple of years. The political instability and civil war like conditions in several countries of the region has also fuelled a slump in an otherwise good market for Indian companies. Despite all the challenges, United Rubber feels that shipments to the Middle East and Africa will grow in the coming years. “We are targeting exports of 200 tonnes per month in the next couple of years,” said Scaria.
United Rubber is producing around 150 tonnes of tread rubber every month. “We could go up to 250 tonnes per month,” he said
The company says it is focused on quality which will work in its favour in the long run. At no point has it compromised on quality parameters to gain market access. Equipped with state-of-the-art machinery, a well- equipped laboratory and a dedicated
R & D department, “United Rubber stretches the concept of quality to the maximum,” stressed Scaria. According to the company the physical properties of a rubber compound have high relevance in predicting service performance of retreaded tyres. “We maintain strict quality controls to achieve best results by adhering to important physical properties required of a tread rubber compound for example – tensile strength, modules or stiffness, elongation, hardness, abrasion resistant, viscosity, scorch etc,” explained Scaria, who has vast experience of almost four decades and profound technical credentials. United Rubber is claimed to be the first tread rubber manufacturing company in Gujarat to install
the Intermix, described as the ultimate equipment for compound mixing. The company is in the process of expanding its activities further, to keep pace with technological advancements and to produce quality tread rubber compounds volumes at short notice. The plants have three operational banbury mixers and a fourth one is under installation.
United Rubber is also undertaking master batch mixing of rubber compounds for major tyre companies in India like Apollo Tyres Ltd, Ceat