Ambitious Apollo to decide soon on European plant location

ERJ staff report (PR)

Essen, Germany – Apollo Tyres will decide on a location for a new manufacturing facility in eastern Europe "within the next few months", the group's global chief marketing officer Marco Paracciani said at the Reifen 2014 trade show in Essen.

The group, he said, has assessed locations in Hungary and Slovakia, among others, as potential sites for the greenfield facility. The selection criteria has included skills, costs, raw materials and infrastructure, though Paracciani said he could not give any further details about the project.

The Apollo board recently announced approval for an investment of up to €500m to establish a new facility to manufacture tires for both passenger cars and commercial vehicles in the region.

The eastern Europe project is part of Apollo's "ambitious and aggressive" growth strategy in Europe, where Paracciani said the group had recently "seen a bottoming out of a negative trend and [where] Apollo has outpaced the market".

Apollo Tyres, he said, had grown 17 percent in the last 12 months in the replacement market in Europe – against an average market growth of only five percent – and built on its market share, which on average in Europe is about three percent.

"It is a small number but we take comfort that in the largest market in Europe, Germany, we now have a six-percent market share. This places us among the top five players in the country," the Apollo marketing chief concluded.