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INDIA
Apollo Continues to Expand Retread Franchisee Network in India
GVK Tyres Shifts Retread Operation to New Site
Venugopal Reddy of GVK Tyres
Apollo Tyres retread division continues to expand its footprint in the Indian domestic market, appointing new franchisees in the North East, South and in the middle of the country recently.
and balancing services.
“Located on the Pune to Bengaluru highway, Chitradurga based Raza Tyres can retread up to 750 tyres each month, and the site is able to cover a radius of 60
Goutam Roy, Division Head Retreading, Apollo Tyres Limited
Firstly, in March and April the company inaugurated new franchised outlets in India’s North Eastern state Manipur. “We have opened a franchisee in the Apollo Imphal Retread Zone in the Manipur State Capital Imphal in early March,” informed Goutam Roy, Division Head Retreading, Apollo Tyres Limited. The Imphal based franchisee is the second in the North Eastern State after Assam.
The market in Manipur, a hilly state in North East India sharing a border with Burma, is worth about 2,500 retread tyres per month. The state has seven operational retread sites with Apollo now having one of the biggest retread operations. The new franchisee has the capacity to retread 500 tyres each month. “The plant could produce up to 600 tyres, and retread requirement has been high over the years as Manipur is a hilly state,” said Roy.
Apollo opened a further franchisee in the South of India at Chitradurga (about 200 km from Bengaluru, capital of the Southern Indian state of Karnataka) at the end of March. The Chitradurga site is a one-stop-solution for tyre maintenance as it offers new tyres, retreading and repair services as well as truck alignment
kms,” said Roy. The fully automated plant is installed with a monorail system and one 7-tyre autoclave.
Meanwhile, Apollo has also penetrated deeper inside the countr y, opening a third franchisee in the Central Indian State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in the city of Bulandshahr. The UP based franchisee Alhans Brothers is able to retread up to 600 tyres each month.
While Imphal and Chitradurga focus on retreaded truck tyres, the Bulandshahr based outlet will focus on normal load applications like bus tyres.
In addition to the three new Apollo Retread Zones, the company had already opened three additional outlets in the cities of Lucknow (UP) Neemrana (Rajasthan) and Raigarh (Chhattisgarh) during 2019.
“We have opened six franchisees in total and are targeting more than 10 additional outlets in the 2019 calendar year,” claimed Roy. On plans to add tread making capacity, Roy responded, “We are planning to increase our capacity by 50% in the next two years considering the growth in our franchisee business.”
Choked lanes and increasing space constraints are leading industr y to relocate out of the Hyderabad city to new suburban industrial towns. “We are building this new retread unit on the outskirts of the city near the highway as there is no sufficient space at the retread plant in the Auto Nagar, where we could retread as well as stock old casings sourced from various states,” said Venugopal Reddy of GVK Tyres.
The new site is expected to be operational in the middle of April. “We retread about 200 tyres in a
GVK has already invested about INR 2.5 million on construction in the family owned plot, which is spread over a 7-acre site. This, says the company, would be used both for retreading and the storage of stock casings. “We also procure about 100 casings each month from states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi. We retread stock casings and sell them in the Telangana market,” he added.
The retread market may not be behaving positively at this point of time in the South Indian state of Telangana, but retreaders continue to invest in new plant and equipment. Most of the retreading activity happens in the congested hub of Auto Nagar, right in the middle of state capital Hyderabad.
month, but with the move to our new location, the volumes are likely to almost double,” said the Vamshi customer.
The existing site in Auto Nagar operates with one 4-tyre autoclave, while the new plant will be installed with a second 3- tyre chamber to retread 1200/24 size tyres.
GVK plant under construction
22 Retreading Business