ATMA Partners Summit puts spotlight on strengthening tyre industry supply chain

ATMA Partners' Summit 2018 put into sharp relief the need for greater engagement and dialogue between Tyre Industry and raw material partners with a view to collectively build on a more sustainable ecosystem and respond to the emerging challenges.

"India is emerging as a manufacturing base with more and more global companies showing interest in the country. There has been lot of activity on the automobile front in India. Tyre industry is perfectly poised to align itself with the ever-changing scenario.

Tyre industry has committed more than US$8 billion in the last few years. More investments are flowing in", said Ashish Pandey, Convener ATMA Supply Chain & Resources (SCR) Group in his welcome address. This year's Partners Summit assumed all the more importance as it was focused on Synthetic Rubber and Reinforcement Materials which together account for 35% of the tyre industry's spend, added Ashish.

The Chief Guest on the occasion, Anil Srivastava who is heading Infrastructure Connectivity & e-mobility verticals at NITI Aayog stated, "With 8.2% growth in the economy in the last quarter and projections of more than 7% for many years to come, India offers huge size and scale for almost all the consumer durables including automobiles and tyres. Urging tyre industry and raw material suppliers to reach higher level of growth," said Srivastava.

"Indian tyre companies are some of the best corporates in the tyre sector in the world. No doubt, the industry is doing very well but there is tremendous potential and scope that is going to be there," added Srivastava.

In his keynote address, Anant Goenka, Chairman ATMA stated that new technologies were redefining the Auto ecosystem and tyre industry as an integral part needs to see the writing on the wall.

"Changes in entire Auto value chain will make next decade far more different than what we experienced in the last few years. Three big changes - technology, need for higher protection of environment and growing uncertainty in the world will determine the future course of action," said Anant.

Partners Summit had a glittering array of representatives from tyre industry and raw material providers. Three international experts made a presentation each on Synthetic Rubbers (Virendra Rathod, Sector Head, Elastomers Business, Reliance Industries Ltd.), Reinforcement Materials (Srikanth Chakravarthy, Managing Director Bekaert India) and Global Energy Scenario (Shinichiro Yamashita, Sr. Market Developer - Butyl, Specialty Elastomers - ExxonMobil).

"Tyre is a raw material intensive industry with raw materials alone accounting for 60% of industry turnover. The summit explored how the stakeholders in the tyre value chain could together respond to the fast unfolding changes, benefit from the emerging opportunities and work towards creating a more sustainable ecosystem," said Rajiv Budhraja, Director General ATMA.

Besides ATMA members, top managers of a host of raw material partners, both national and international, were present on the occasion. Some of these companies included Reliance Industries Limited, Indian Synthetic Rubber Pvt. Ltd. (ISRPL), Arlanxeo, Trinseo, Asahi Kasei, ZS Elastomers, LG Chem Tech Center, JSR Corporation, Bekaert, Xingda, Aarti Steel, TATA Steel, Raj Ratan, Madura Industrial Textiles, SRF, Century Enka, Performance Fibers and ExxonMobil.

Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association (ATMA) is amongst the most active National industry bodies in India representing Rs. 57,000 crore (USD 8.5 bn) automotive tyre industry. Eleven large tyre companies comprising mix of Indian and International tyre majors and representing over 90% of production of tyres in India are members of the Association. ATMA members include Apollo Tyres, Birla Tyres, Bridgestone India, Ceat, Continental India, Goodyear India, JK Tyre & Industries, Michelin, MRF, TVS Tyres and Yokohama.