Apollo Tyres, the country's largest tyre maker by volumes, plans to import radial tyres for luxury cars like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen from the company's manufacturing facility in South Africa.
Citing low volumes, the company intends to completely stop production of such tyres from its manufacturing facility in India, in the next few months.
"We are evaluating the possibility of stopping the production of radial tyres (for luxury cars) from our plant in India and import them from South Africa to meet local demand. This is because, the radial tyre market for luxury cars in India is only about 600 tyres a month, which is quite low. Apollo currently manufactures 200 radial tyres a month," said Sunam Sarkar, chief -- strategy and business operations, Apollo Tyres.
In a parallel development, the tyre maker also plans to stop the production of cross-ply (non-radial or ordinary) truck tyres at the company's South African facility.
The demand will be met from exports of these tyres from Apollo's manufacturing facilities in India. Dunlop South Africa currently makes 400 tyres per day.
"South Africa is not a big market for cross-ply truck tyres. The market there has demand for radial tyres that are used by high-tonnage trucks. The production will be replaced by cross-ply imports from India," said Sarkar.
The development is part of the group's restructuring strategy, to synergise the group's resources by replacing the weak areas of one group member, with the strengths of another.
As part of the restructuring, Apollo has replaced the raw-material source bases of Dunlop South Africa, with its own bases in China, Russia and Eastern Europe.
Apollo Tyres had, in January, acquired South Africa-based Dunlop Tyres International, a radial tyre manufacturer for Rs 290 crore. With this acquisition Apollo took control of Dunlop's two plants in South Africa (75 tonne each) and one in Zimbabwe (30 tonne).
The Dunlop acquisition has made Apollo the largest tyre manufacturer in India with a capacity of 900 tonne per day, ahead of MRF Tyres' 800 tonne.
Apollo manufactures tyres at two plants in Kerala and one in Vadodara. The company is a dominant player in the area of commercial vehicles and is growing fast in the passenger car segment.
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