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TYREGRIP OPENS LARGE RETREAD FACTORY IN PUNE COUNTRY REPORT - INDIA One of the largest retreaders in Maharashtra, Tyregrip, has relocated its retread site from Navi Mumbai to Pune. Tyregrip had operated three retread plants in Surat, Mumbai and Pune respectively but had been forced to phase out the Surat operation due to the pandemic. Now, however, Tyregrip has shifted both its functioning plants to a single and larger company-owned unit in Pune. “Our new Pune site is spread over a 22,000 sq ft plot with 14,000 sq ft built-up area, which is almost double compared to both our earlier Mumbai and Pune sites together,” informed Prasad Mahajan, Managing Partner, Tyregrip. When asked how the new location helps Tyregrip in its business, Prasad added, “With more space and better facilities, we all set to take our tyre retreading productivity to the next level by entering in new segment as well as focusing on existing business.” Other factors in the relocation were the increasing production costs in Mumbai as well as the high rent on the two functioning units. The new site commenced production in September along with a new go-down in Kalamboli. The new unit is strategically located in the agricultural belt of Kolhapur, Solapur and Baramati in Maharashtra state. “The agri- cultural belt is a huge tractor market and offers a lot of opportu- nity for growth. It was getting difficult for us to cover this agrarian belt from the Mumbai site,” said Mahajan. “Serving this vast belt from far-off Mumbai was costing the company a lot.” Now Tyregrip shed has overheads with its own plant and is keen on focusing on increasing production. Tyregrip has two existing sales offices in Mumbai and Pune, and plans to open third at Karad by first week of November. It is cur- rently in the midst of appointing a new sales team for the Karad sales office. Currently, the new facility offers both precure and hot cure sys- tems and is installed with 4 autoclaves, 8 bonders, and 3 OTR bonders with a total capacity of more than 6,000 tyres in two shifts per month. “We used to retread around 3,500 tyres per month earlier with all three plants in operation, and since oper- ation started at the new site, production almost reached 3,000 tyres in a month.” Currently, Tyregrip retreads Truck, OTR and JCB tyres of varied sizes by both hot and cold processes. Now the company will soon invest in a fifth electric autoclave to partially shift its OTR re- treading from hot to precure process. A new 8 tyre chamber (4th autoclave) supplied by Coimbatore Glisten has been installed at the new Pune site recently. Now the new Pune factory aims to cater to a large market spreads over 300 kms from Mumbai to Vapi in Gujarat and from Pune to Karad in Maharashtra. P. 38