Apollo ships first OTR tyres to BEML

ERJ staff report (DS)

Mumbai, India -- Apollo Tyres has said it has shipped the first OTR tyres from its new factory to India's biggest manufacturers of earth-moving equipment, BEML almost six months ahead of schedule. Carrying the brandname XTRAX, these are 35” (24.00-35) tyres meant for 60-ton dumper trucks.

The tyres have been produced through an exclusive agreement between Apollo Tyres and BEML. Under the terms of the agreement, BEML will finance Apollo with a loan of Rs 1 billion (euro 16.1 million) as seed money for the tyre manufacturer to set up a 10-ton per day capacity unit to produce specific OTR tyres for BEML's use. Apollo said it has so far received a quarter of these funds.

Apollo Tyres undertook a ground-breaking ceremony for a brownfield OTR facility at its Limda plant (in Gujarat, western India) in February 2008, and began construction last April. BEML had given Apollo Tyres 14 months, from the second half of last year when BEML made 25% of the payment to Apollo, to dispatch the first set of tyres. However, with 14 tyres already on their way to BEML's plant in Mysore, in southern India, Apollo has managed to execute the order much ahead of time.

The OTR facility in Limda is expected to be in continuous production from March onwards. The next set of tyres to be delivered to BEML would be 49” (24.00-49) OTRs.

The first phase of Apollo's OTR facility is dedicated to the BEML project at a cost of over Rs 1.2 billion. Additional capacity and investments would be made over the next three years for the manufacture of radial OTR tyres, which are currently not manufactured in India.