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TYREXPO INDIA
equipment maker from Bangalore. In addition, with the increasing share of radial tyres in India,
tubes repair patches,” Ankur stated. Now, the company manufactures a whole range of repair patches for
Poland by the year end,” Nair confided. Eastern is exporting 50- 60 tonnes of tread rubber each month.
Meanwhile, Eastern is also working on plans to diversify into running its own retread plants this year. The company has ambitious plans to have one model retread plant in every state in the years to come. “The model retread plant would be known as a ‘Process Evaluation Centre’ to showcase in-house demonstrations of product application and quality, creating brand image etc,” explained Rajesh. The company has earmarked a sum of INR 10 crore (US$ 2.5 million) for investment in the model plant building project initially.
The Kerala based tread maker believes that the retreading industry is slowly becoming organised in India. “The trend will move further in the direction of consolidation of the retreading industr y into an organised industry with the entry of overseas players,” he says. The company feels that a large number of small unorganised plants may be
forced to wind up their operations with the increasing emphasis on quality in the future.
According to Rajesh, the company’s first plant is likely to be opened in Bangalore by August end followed by Chennai in September. “The third plant would come up in December in Rajasthan and the fourth in Kolkata in the East by early 2016,” he elaborated.
The Indian retreading industr y is currently going through a labour crisis and major companies in the business are opening institutes to create a skilled work force. “We are planning to open the first ‘Tyre Technical Institute’ in Chennai next month in August, where graduates from technical institutes are taken as skilled labour to work on the shop floor of retread plants to fill the rising skilled and unskilled labour gap,” Rajesh stated.
Eastern Treads is a part of diversified INR 650 crore Group based in Kerala with interests in mattresses, mineral water, pickles, school clothing and tea.
Ankur Dhoot (without spectacles), Chief Manager with Rakesh Dhoot, Director, Blackstone Rubber Industries Pvt Ltd
Blackstone is planning further expansion in precured retreading. “Now, we are focusing on enhancing the road service network to boost our sales in precured retreading,” informed Ankur. “Earlier, our focus was more on the mining, construction and cement plants catered for by the conventional process, but now we are also focusing on road transport,’ he said.
“We are planning to hike the production to 1,500 tyres per month soon,” he added. “To further improve our production from the cold process, we diversified last year into repair solutions also by manufacturing tyre repair patches,
nylon, radial and OTR tyres. Blackstone has developed a wide sales and service network to reach the major cities of Rajasthan besides serving the adjoining states of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. “We have sales and service staff that are stationed in these locations to collect and bring the tyres to our plant in Jodhpur and deliver back to our clients,” explained Ankur. The company also has tie-ups with various logistics companies to transport tyres back to the client in a maximum time of 10 days even in far-off locations in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.
Rajesh S, Vice President, Operations & CFO, Rubber Division Eastern Group of Companies
Eastern Treads to Open
10 Model Retreading
Plants in India
Eastern Treads Ltd is covering the ground gradually to achieve capacity utilisation at its plant in Oonukal, around 60 km from Cochin in the southern state of Kerala. The sixteen year old plant has the capacity to produce 1,200 tonnes of tread rubber per month. “We have improved in the last couple of years and almost doubled the production from 400 tonnes to about 800 tonnes per month,” said Rajesh S, Vice President, Operations & CFO, Rubber Division Eastern Group of Companies.
The tread maker has segmented its tread sales under three groups – Open Market, State Road Transport Corporations (SRTC) and Exports. The firm has started working with SRTCs from a number of states including Kerala, Maharashtra,
Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. “Previously, we were not engaged in the SRTC business, which will bring volumes to our overall sales. Now we have brought them under a tyre management system and given them cost per km guarantees. We next have to find the way to move further on from here,” he stated. Eastern Treads’ export market is also picking up and has shown a positive surge in the last couple of years. “Exports commenced ver y recently, in 2014, and now we are exporting, on average, four containers to the various world markets in South America, Africa, Middle East, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan etc.,” informed Export Manager Naveen Nair. The
company is also expanding its footprint in Eastern Europe. “We would likely to start shipments to
Gandakey Group Opens
Two More Retreading
40 Retreading Business
Plants in Nepal
Nepal based retreader Gandakey Group has opened two more retreading plants in the Eastern part of the Himalayan country. The Kathmandu based firm now has 12 operational retreading plants spread all over Nepal. “The new plants are in Itahari and Birtamode,”
informed Yagyeshwar Pokhrel, Director, Gandakey Group.
Itahari is the largest city in the Sunsari District in the Koshi Zone of south-eastern Nepal. It is located at the main transportation junction of eastern Nepal. Birtamode is a
municipality in Jhapa District of Nepal. It is the commercial, educational and transport hub of the Jhapa District. “The Itahari plant started around a year ago, while Birtamode became operational only three months ago,” said Pokhrel. The Itahari plant retreads 200 tyres per month and Birtamode retreads 150 tyres every month.
“All our plants together retread 3,000 tyres each month,” added Pokhrel.
Nepal, of course, was in the news