Apollo Tyres today laid the foundation stone for a ₹1,800-crore tyre factory in Andhra Pradesh.

The unit will be its seventh globally and will come up over a 200-acre site in Chinnapanduru village near Sri City in Chittoor district.

The factory will provide direct employment to 700 people.

The foundation stone was laid by AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, in the presence of Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman, and Neeraj Kanwar, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Apollo Tyres.

The facility will produce passenger car radial (PCR) tyres initially. The initial capacity will be about 5.5 million tyres per year and will serve both domestic and export markets.

The construction work will start within the next six months, and the factory is expected to be up and running in the following 24 months.

“We are facing some shortages for PCR requirements. Five years ago, we were a small player in the PCR segment. But today, we are Number 2 in India in the segment with strong supplies to vehicle makers and after-market demand.

“The brand has strengthened itself over these years in the domestic market, while our exports have also been growing,” said Neeraj Kanwar.

In 2016-17, the PCR segment accounted for 39 per cent of the company’s revenues, which stood at ₹13,060 crore.

He said the company did not have land at Oragadam manufacturing site near Chennai to grow further as it had already expanded fully there with a cumulative investment of ₹5,000 crore.

“In Chennai, we are producing about 900 tonnes per day. But in this new unit in Andhra Pradesh, we will be producing 180-200 tonnes a day in the first phase,” he said.

In the next phase expansion, may be after three-four years, the company may look at making commercial vehicle and off-highway tyres.

Kanwar also said Apollo Tyres was in the process of rolling out high-end motorcycle tyres out of its Vadodara facility.

Apollo Tyres currently has four manufacturing facilities in the country — two (including a leased facility) in Kerala, and one each in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. It has a factory each in the Netherlands and Hungary.

(The correspondent was in Chittoor at the invitation of the company.)

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