Apollo Tyres to invest Rs 3,000 cr in five yrs

Tyre manufacturer Apollo Tyres plans to invest Rs 3,000 crore in the next five years to set up greenfield plants in India and abroad as well as for expanding its existing facilities.

The company, aiming to join the league of top six tyre makers internationally and achieve turnover of $4 billion in the next five years, is in the process of setting up two new facilities, in Chennai and East Europe.

"We will invest about Rs 3,000 crore over the next five years. Me and my whole team's desire is to be amongst the top six players of the world," Apollo Tyres Vice-Chairman and Joint MD Neeraj Kanwar told PTI.

The company is looking at Slovakia and Poland for setting up a plant to manufacture 7 million passenger radial tyre with an investment of Rs 1,200 crore after it pulled out from Hungary.

It is also currently setting up a new facility in Chennai with similar investment and capacity.

The Chennai plant would be ready in about a year, he added.

"After Chennai plant is commissioned, we would produce 35,000 passenger radial tyres and 1,800 truck/bus radial tyres per day. By then we would account for 25-28 per cent of the total tyre production in the country," Kanwar said.

Part of the total investment would also go towards expansion of its facility in Vadodara for manufacturing off-the-road tyres for which the firm has entered into an agreement with construction equipment maker BEML to supply to Coal India.

The company, which clocked a turnover of $1.2 billion last fiscal, plans to take its revenues to $2 billion by 2010 and then double it in the next three years.