Apollo Tyres to invest Rs 1,100 cr in nine plants

Tyre major Apollo Tyres Ltd would invest Rs 1,100 crore this year in its nine plants in India and abroad, besides expanding its operations in Asia, a top company official said here today.

In the current fiscal, total capacity of the Indian plants would touch 1,450 tonnes, while 200 tonnes each would be added to the South African and European plants.

"We will be looking at several countries for expansion.. we are looking at Asia, where we see lot of growth potential", Apollo Chairman Onkar S Kanwar said, adding that a decision would be taken depending on raw material availability and expansion of the market.

On company investment plans this year, Kanwar said Rs 900 crore investments would be made in Apollo's five plants in India.

It would invest 30 million dollars at its South Africa plant and 6 million Euros for Europe plant, he said.

The company would invest Rs 300 crore this year in its greenfield plant at Chennai, which produces truck-bus radial and passenger car tyres, to make it the most efficient, modern and productive tyre plant across Asia. Since production began four months ago dispatch of consignments to OEMs has also started, he said.

At the Chennai plant, where total investment till this year end would be Rs 2,300 crore, only diploma engineers had been employed as the IT driven machinery requires technical know how and advanced skills. By year end, the plant will produce 16,000 passenger cars and 6,000 truck-bus radial tyres every day, he said.

Apollo would invest Rs 200 crores in its Baroda plant and also planned to invest Rs 200 crore at Perambra in Kerala, which are under lockout since the past two months.

Describing the Perambra plant as his 'personal baby' Kanwar said it pained him to see it closed due to labour problems, causing a production loss of 300 tonnes of tyres a day and Rs 300 crore loss to the company.

He urged workers to resume work, saying 'We want to be fair, but firm'. He pointed out that the Perambra unit has the lowest productivity among all of the company's plants in India.