Annual capacity of JK Tyres' is to touch 75 lakh car radials

CHENNAI: JK Tyres's new plant here will take its capacity to 75 lakh car radials and 14 lakh bus and truck radials annually, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Raghupati Singhania said today.

"A total of Rs 1,100 crore has been invested on this plant, besides expansion of the existing facility at Mysore in Karnataka," Singhania told reporters here, and added that it would produce 25 lakh car radials and four lakh bus and truck radials.

"This is our sixth plant in India, which will take our capacity to 75 lakh car radials (per year) and 14 lakh bus and truck radials," he said, adding that the plant had gone "on steam" on Sunday.

He added that an investment of around Rs 900 crore has been made on the plant here which will cater to the company needs, including exports.

"This is a highly automated plant with state-of-the-art technology and we are looking at (hiring) 450 employees," he said in response to a query.

When asked if his company would foray into two-wheeler tyre manufacturing, he replied in negative though he said "it is extremely lucrative".

"We want to concentrate on what we are doing," he said. Among others, he asked the government to allow duty-free import of "some ad hoc quantity of rubber," and demanded levying of anti-import duty on tyres.

"We are not against imports. But it should be at fair prices," he said, adding that China in particular was pushing its tyres in the market with the country's tyre industry becoming bigger than its demand.

Regarding the availability of rubber, he said more had to be done on the plantation front and said his own company was looking for plantations even outside India, especially in South-east Asian countries.

On new orders, Singhania said the company has bagged an order from Daimler India Commercial Vehicles to supply tyres for its trucks.

"The latest original equipment manufacturer (OEM) client for us is Daimler India, which will be rolling out trucks at its plant here," he said, but declined to comment on the order size.Automobile News