Yokohama Rubber Company, the Japanese tyre manufacturer, has announced an additional USD 171 million investment into its upcoming off-highway tyre plant at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, which will nearly double the initially planned daily capacity of 137 tonne to 257 tonne.
With this, the overall investment the company has made in its India business, which by production capacity and employee strength, is the largest globally at USD 508 million so far.
The initial plan for the Visakhapatnam plant, which is now underway with the steel structure being erected, was 137 tpdcapacity at an investment of USD 165 million.
The capacity is being ramped up by 120 tonne more at an investment of an additional USD 171 million, taking the total planned capacity to 257 tpd.
Of the USD 508 million cumulative investment, USD 336 million are flowing into the Visakhapatnam plant, coming up at the Atchutapuram Industrial Park on 3,90,000 sqmtr plot.
The rest are incremental investments the group has made into the two plants that it had bought from Alliance Tyre Group in 2016 at Dahej in Gujarat (USD 135 million) and at Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu (USD 37 million).
The company had in early 2020 announced the Vizag plant with an investment of USD 165 million.
Yokohama Off Highway Tires is now the consolidated off-the-road tyre business of Yokohama Rubber, after the merger of its two off-the-road tyre businesses Yokohama OTR and Alliance Tire Group globally, effective from January 2021. The company sells its products globally under the brands -- Alliance, Galaxy, Primex and Aichi.
In India, the group has two units -- Yokohama Off Highway Tires India and Yokohama India, which manufactures passenger and commercial vehicles tyres. The plant expansion is to meet the rising demand for off-highway tyres in global markets.
While the first phase at an investment of USD 165 million for 137 tonne of daily capacity will be on-stream by Q1/2023, the new additional daily capacity of 120 tonne in Phase-II is scheduled to start in Q1/2024.
Though the company recently doubled the capacity at the Dahej plant in Gujarat and began construction of the Visakhapatnam plant in Q3/2020, given the rising global demand, it has decided to nearly double the planned capacity at the Vizag plant.
For the group's off-highway tyre business, India is the largest production base with 90 percent of its global production coming in from the two plants in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, which will go up after the Vizag plant goes on-stream.
Dahej and Tirunelveli plants produce three of the group's core off-highway tyre brands (Alliance, Galaxy and Primex), which are used in agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery. Over 90 percent of the production is shipped to foreign markets.
The Dahej plant has a capacity of 1,26,000tonne per 360 tpd, the Tirunelveli plant is 86,800 tonne per 248 tpd facility and these plants employ over 6,000 of the 7,000 global workforce at the group's off-highway tyre business.
The Atchutapuram facility is being built on 3,90,000 sq mtr site which is large enough for further expansion. The company’s medium-term transformation plan seeks to position the group's off-highway tyres business as a future growth driver.
The group plans to expand the off-highway tyre business by capitalising on the strength of a multi-brand line-up that includes Yokohama, Alliance, Galaxy, Primex and Aichi, and also to develop new markets.
The group is also increasing its off-highway tyre production capacity to further strengthen its market competitiveness.
Yokohama Off Highway Tyres specialises in design, development, manufacturing and marketing of agriculture, forestry, construction, industrial, earthmoving, mining and port and other commercial tires and has a product portfolio of over 3,500 stock keeping units.