The Hindu Business Line : Demand for truck, bus tyres seen growing 5%

TRUCK and bus tyre production staged a comeback in March to touch 9.43 lakh tyres, which is the second-best production performance by the members of the Automotive Tyre Manufacturers' Association (ATMA) during fiscal 2003-04.

The production level of 9.52 lakh tyres in July 2003 was the best production performance registered in this category. Truck and bus tyres account for more than 70 per cent of the Rs 12,000 crore domestic tyre industry.

Production performance in this category stood at 8.80 lakh tyres in February 2004 and 8.90 lakh tyres in March 2003.

Informed sources held that the industry is currently not faced with any inventory pile-up in this category of tyres. "There were some concerns of inventory pile-up in December 2003 and January 2004. But the demand has been strong in March and we expect it to remain strong in the current year as well.

The industry expects the demand for truck and bus tyres to grow by at least 5 per cent in 2004-05 over and above the 10 per cent growth witnessed in the previous year," a senior tyre industry official said.

Meanwhile, the members of ATMA are planning to contract about 26,500 tonnes of natural rubber imports during April-August this year.

The level of natural rubber imports during fiscal 2003-04 stood at about 30,000 tonnes.

The industry's performance on the truck and bus tyre exports front has also been encouraging, with the volume of exports during March touching a level of 2.23 lakh tyres.

The domestic tyre industry had exported 1.93 lakh tyres of truck and bus tyres during March 2003.

Truck and bus tyre exports during February stood at about two lakh units.

According to ATMA data, passenger car tyre production in March stood at 9.14 lakh tyres as against 8.52 lakh tyres in the previous month.

Passenger car tyre production by ATMA member companies stood at 7.46 lakh tyres in March 2003.