Bridgestone begins tyre production from Chakan

Japanese tyre major Bridgestone Corporation on Thursday began production of tyres at its second greenfield facility in India, located in Chakan, Pune.

The facility was inaugurated by Prithviraj Chavan and Kazuhisa Nishigai, COO and Representative Board Member, Bridgestone Corporation.

The Chakan plant is the company’s 48th facility worldwide and when complete will rank amongst the largest single location plants globally. Spread over 187 acres of land,  the company has invested Rs 2600 crore in this plant and  it will generate an employment to approximately 1800 people. As a global expansion policy, Bridgestone is spending $3.56 billion in the year 2013 to expand tyre capacity in emerging markets including India and Thailand.

Initially, the plant  will produce 5000 passenger car radial tyres per day. Manufacture of tyres for trucks and buses will begin in October. When all the phases of expansion are complete the plant will have a capacity to manufacture around 10,000 passenger car radial tyres and 3000 truck bus radial tyres per day that will cater to the growing needs of the Indian market. Bridgestone expects capacity utilisation for passenger car tyres by December 2014 and for bus and truck tyres by the end of 2017.

Talking to the media, Kazuhisa Nishigai, COO and representative board member, Bridgestone Corporation said,“The company was presently training Indian engineers at Tokyo, and may have an R&D Centre in India in the future. We may export tyres to the other countries from Chakan plant as per the futuremarket condiotons."

Bridgestone's first plant is loacted at Kheda near Indore, in Madhya Pradesh which manufactures 15,000 radials for cars and 400 for trucks and buses per day. The company has dealer network of 2500  across India.