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INDIA
Supreme to Expand into New Tyre Business
The company says it is likely to start production of precure treads in the next 2-3 months. “Currently, we are sourcing treads from Midas and Indag, but once we start manufacturing own tread, sourcing from outside will be discontinued, and we may even start supplying in the open market,” he said. Mateshwari manufactures around 15
tonnes of conventional rubber per month and initially plans to make around 6-10 tonnes of precure rubber each month.
The company has ambitious growth plans in both retreading as well as tyre manufacturing. It has plans to manufacture tractor and auto rickshaw tyres in the future.
located on the outskirts of town on the highway to Pathankot, which is a bigger city near to the Pakistan border with a frontline airbase. “We were doing well considering the small place but a lean period started about 2-3 years back and production has been consistently sliding down,” he said. Started in 1991, the plant has Hi-tech brand equipment sourced from Coimbatore. Currently, it retreads between 220-230 units each month, down by almost 30 per cent.
“The tyre shop would further expand our tyre business. Initially, we began with car tyres with plans to add truck and bus tyres in the future,” he said. “Car tyres are lower in price and bring in cash, whereas, new TBR business is largely a credit business like tyre retreading.”
The company has plans to integrate its new tyre business with its retreading operation in the future. “On the retreading side, our focus remains on bringing production levels back to 350 units plus at the earliest,” he stated.
It is not only cheap tyres, which are responsible for the current scenario, but also increasing competition, as the number of retreading units has also increased.
“Actually three more plants have come in and the total number of plants have now become six in an area of 10 km, therefore, price- cutting, long term credit are now being offered to retain customers,” he explained. Supreme buys tread from Midas and Indag.
Tyregrip to Expand in Gujarat and Konkan Region
Hriday Mahajan of Supreme Tyres
With the market flooded by cheap tyres, smaller retreaders are looking for options to sustain their struggling operations. Jassur based Supreme Tyres has been in the retreading business for the last 25 years, but has never struggled to run its operation as much as it does these days.
Jassur is a small town in the hilly Northern state of Himachal Pradesh and about 23 kms from the Pathankot district in Punjab, where three Northern states Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh meet.
“With retreading going down due to the presence of imported cheap tyres, we are planning to open a tyre shop in Jassur’s main market to sell mainly car tyres,” said Hriday Mahajan of Supreme Tyres at Tyrexpo India in New Delhi.
Supreme has a precure retreading operation and used to retread around 350-400 tyres each month about couple of years back. The unit is
Navi Mumbai based retreader Tyregrip, has ambitious plans to grow in the Western and Southern part of India. Tyregrip is looking to buy out a plant in Kolhapur and expects to finalise the deal shortly. “We will do this in the next 2-3 months as we have to prepare the
plant to our
requirements, ready to
commence operation
in January 2017,”
said Prasad Mahajan,
Director, Tyregrip at
Tyrexpo India.
The new plant will
cater to the coastal
areas of Karnataka,
Goa and Maharashtra
popularly known as
the Konkan region. “It
will be a wholly
electric plant with the
capacity to retread 2,000 tyres per month,” he said. The plant will retread tyres from light commercial vehicles (LCVs) to tractors. “There is a large agricultural belt and this offers good opportunities in the tractor segment.” He added.
Tyregrip’s Navi Mumbai plant is producing around 3,500 tyres per month. It also has a tie-up with Michelin and retreads around 100 Michelin brand tyres every month. With this in mind, it has opened a certified Recamic tyre retreading facility at its plant in Vashi to service truck and bus customers in Western
India.
Tyregrip started its Vashi plant in early 2014, and has an installed capacity of 6,000 tyres per month. It covers Mumbai and the western part of Maharashtra.
As part of its ambitious growth
Prasad Mahajan & Raj Sarvaiya, Directors, TyreGrip
Rajasthan Retreader to Foray into Precure Tread Production
strategy in Western India, Tyregrip has plans to also expand in the Gujarat market. “After making the Kolhapur unit operational, there is a plan to set-up a plant between Surat and Baroda, and in this case we are looking to buying an existing facility as in Kolhapur,” said Raj Sarvaiya, Director.
The Gujarat plant is expected to be operational in the second half of 2017. “We will travel to Gujarat to make a feasibility study for the proposed plant,” he stated. Tyregrip is among the biggest clients of Eastern Tread in Maharashtra.
Despite the overall slowdown and lower margins in the retreading industry due to the presence of Chinese tyres in the Indian market, smaller retreaders are increasingly realising that there is much to be said for manufacturing one’s own tread rubber instead of sourcing from manufacturers at high prices and operating on negligible margins. Several retreaders are planning to manufacture their own tread rubber, having experience in making conventional treads already, and are moving on to expand their ranges to precure rubber also.
“This would remove the dependence on procuring rubber from outside and stabilise the ongoing price fluctuation as well as assuring better control over rising production costs,” said Lokesh Jagetiya of Mateshwari Tyre Retreaders.
The Chittorgarh (Rajasthan) based retreader and manufacturer of conventional tread is soon to expand into making precure tread.
“We have the required machinery like a mixing mill, calendar, extruder with us. We only require a precure tread press and bonder for the precure rubber production,” said Jagetiya at Tyrexpo India.
The company also retreads 200 TBR tyres a month by the precure process and around 70 OTR tyres with conventional rubber at its Chittorgarh plant. Established in 2002, the plant started manufacturing conventional treads in 2009 to retread mainly tractor and JCB tyres.
“We manufacture conventional rubber for sizes up to 24/35 largely for OTRs and are planning to produce precure rubber up 29.5/25 size,” he said.
Eastern Tread to Add New Products and Strengthen Franchisee Network
66 Retreading Business
Kerala based tread rubber maker Eastern Treads Ltd is planning to add a slew of new products to its portfolio. The plant at Oonukal near Cochin in Kerala will soon start manufacturing curing envelopes. “Considering the increased acceptability of retreading in the country, we are working on adding curing envelopes to our product range. We are aiming to launch the product by September,” said Naveen Nair, Manager, International Business,
Eastern Tread at Tyrexpo India 2016 held in New Delhi recently.
The Oonukal facility has the capacity to produce 1,200 tonnes of tread rubber each month. Currently, the plant is manufacturing around 1,000 tonnes per month with plans to hike the installed capacity further in the near future.
Meanwhile, the company also plans to get into the manufacturing of consumables required for retreading. “We will launch consumables like