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INDIA
Narmada Replaces Steam
with Electric Autoclaves
in Three Plants
Due to the slowdown in the retreading industry, one of the biggest retreaders and tyre dealers in the Bharuch district of Gujarat, Narmada Tyre Sales and Remolding, is focusing on the sale of new tyres. “Tyre retreading is generally down during the two rainy months of
July-August, besides which the ongoing slump in the sector has forced us to divert our focus onto the new tyre business,” said Harshad Bhai of Narmada Tyre Sales and Remolding during a visit to the Ankeleshwar based retreading plant of the company.
Indian states, 25 per cent to North India, 20 per cent in the West and 10 per cent in the East. “We are focusing on the Western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.” The company has recently opened new depots in the Assam capital Guwahati to cater to the seven states of the North East. A new depot has also been opened in Ranchi in the state of Jharkhand in March. Vamshi operates in the market largely through a franchisee network spread over India in the same way as its competitors Treadsdirect and MRF, while key open market players are Midas and Indag. Vamshi works with a mixed network of franchisees and open market dealers, with a total of 225 partner franchisees and dealers. “With competition intensifying in the market, it has become difficult to maintain a dedicated franchisee network, therefore, the majority of the 225 are franchisees but a good number of them use our tread rubber as per requirements,” said K V Sarma, Director (Operations). “Even the non-franchisees use 70-80 per cent of our tread rubber,” he said. Vamshi used to manufacture retread plant equipment but it has moved out of the machine business. “We are not manufacturing ourselves but we have started working with two vendors who make equipment as per our specifications,” Sarma said.
It has been observed that precure retreading has been picking up even faster in the Indian market in the last few years. “Radialisation has given a fillip to precure retreading, and we have observed that a number of our franchisees have converted to precure from hot. The majority of them have stopped the hot process altogether,” observed M Ramesh Reddy. As the trend continues precure is expected to acquire a 90 per cent market share in India, while 10 per cent only will be covered by the traditional hot process in the next 2-3 years.
The Indian tread rubber market is estimated to be around 5,000 tonnes per month in the organised sector. The unorganised sector supplies a further 2,000 tonnes each month in the domestic market. The organised and unorganised sectors together are worth about INR 1,200 to 1,500 crore per month.