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INDIA
Harsh Himmatramka, Director, Waidhan Engineering & Industries Pvt Ltd
way in addition to the region being home to a number of major transport companies.”
On the market potential of the second plant, Garg said; “We are targeting 100 per cent growth at the Raigad plant.”
The new plant retreads truck tyres by the pre-cure system and OTR tyres by the traditional mould cure process. Currently, the plant retreads 350 truck and bus tyres and 60 OTR tyres each month.
Meanwhile, the mother plant in Uttar Pradesh, which has been operational for the last two decades, retreads almost double that of the new plant with around 700 tyres per month.
Tyres are manufactured using custom built tread rubber manufactured under the company’s own brand ‘Tech Treads’. Each plant has three autoclaves with equipment sourced from MRF.
Waidhan Engineering Upgrades Plant Machinery
Singrauli (Madhya Pradesh) based Waidhan Engineering and Industries Pvt Ltd, is currently in the process of upgrading its OTR retreading plant machinery, installing new equipment, sourced locally as well imported from China. The modernisation is expected to be completed by June 2017.
As part of the upgrade, Waidhan is phasing out machinery that is over 20 years old and replacing it with new equipment to make the process more mechanised. “Currently, the emphasis is on the individual skills
of workers on the shop-floor in OTR retreading, whereas post- modernisation, the process will be more mechanised,” explained Harsh Himmatramka, Director, Waidhan Engineering and Industries Pvt Ltd, in an interview with Retreading Business in Mumbai recently. Waidhan retreads bus and truck tyres by both hot and pre-cure systems. Its OTR retreads are currently mould cure only, but with the plant upgrade the company plans to introduce OTR retreading by the cold process also. The company also produces about 60
tonnes of camelback and precure tread rubber for its own retreading processes each month. “About 90 per cent of the rubber production is consumed in the OTR retreading and the rest is precure tread rubber for retreading truck and bus tyres,” he said.
Waidhan has expertise in the retreading of mining tyres and consumes around 2 tonnes of rubber each day depending on tyre size. It also retreads 300-400 truck and bus tyres each month.
Waidhan retreaded 2,100 OTR tyres
of sizes 18x25 and above in 2016. “We are marketing aggressively in the private and government mining companies and targeting 10 per cent growth in 2017,” he said. The company mainly caters to the coal, iron ore and limestone mines in the region.
The Singrauli plant covers the OTR segment from 18x25 to 24x35 sizes bring tyres from all over India for retreading. “We travel up to 2,500 km to Bellary mines down south in Karnataka but below these sizes the cost of logistics would be high,