Apollo to open greenfield European plant wthin 5 years

By Doug Bolduc, Crain News (ANE)

Geneva -- Apollo is reviving plans to build a greenfield tyre factory in Eastern Europe. The company announced today that within 5 years it wants

to begin manufacture of passenger car tyres in either Poland, Hungary or Slovakia with an investment of around 100 million euros.

Vice Chairman Neeraj Kanwar said the decision  for the 900-employee factory will be based on three main factors:

• the

  stability of the government, because the company wants to avoid a repeat

  of the political turmoil that foiled its bid to open a plant in Hungary

  in 2008;
  

• the proximity to a port; and 
• the

  availability of talent, such as tyre engineers and people with

  experience working for a tyre maker.
  

In January 2008 Apollo announced plans to invest Euro 200 million to build a passenger car radial tyre

plant in Hungary with an annual capacity of 7 million tyres in the first phase,

expected to be completed in 18 months. That plan was abandoned in August 2008, when the company began looking in Slovakia. In the end, the company added a small amount of capacity in Enschede, Netherlands and built large, modern plants in India to serve EU demand.