Tyre major Ceat is planning to increase imports of radial truck tyres by four times to 2,000 tyres per month in 12 to 16 months.
Currently, the company imports 500 tyres from its partner, Italian tyre maker Pirelli's Turkey-based manufacturing facility.
"Seeing a gradual increase in demand for domestic radial truck tyres, we intend to step up our imports from Pirelli," said Paras Chowdhary, managing director.
With the government's infrastructure development plan on track and companies such as Volvo, DaimlerChrysler, Tata Motors and Force Mann planning to launch high tonnage trucks, Ceat is seeing a huge demand.
The current demand for radial tyres is only at 3 per cent of the total tyre market for trucks and buses. "As the market for truck radials is too small, we will be meeting the demand through imports only. There are no plans of manufacturing them domestically," he said.
In India, the import duty on tyres is less than those imposed on raw materials required for making tyres. Therefore, manufacturers prefer importing tyres (such as the less-in demand radial truck tyres), compared to making them domestically.
There is more demand for radial passenger car tyres than truck and bus radials. Ceat makes radial passenger car tyres at its Nashik manufacturing facility.
"We are expanding the capacity of passenger car radials to 65,000 tpm, by the end of this calendar, from the existing 40,000. We are also setting up a 20,000 TPM facility for passenger car radials in Sri Lanka," said Chowdhary.
The company will undergo this expansion at an investment of Rs 50 crore. The expanded capacity will meet the domestic market demand as well as exports.
Along with crossply tyres, Ceat also makes off-the-road and multipurpose truck tyres. The company has a market share of 28 per cent in OTR tyres.
"We have plans to double the production capacity of OTR tyres to 10,000 units," he said.
Ceat exports its tyres to 90 countries. "We have plans to significantly expand our presence in South America and Europe," said Chowdhury. The company is already strong in markets such as Africa, middle-east and South East Asia.
