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Yokohama Off Highway Tires (YOHT), the consolidated off –the-road business identity of The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. of Japan, has begun work on the ₹1,200-crore greenfield plant at Atchutapuram Industrial Area near the port city of Visakhapatnam.
Anil Gupta, Chief Operating Officer, Yokohama Off-Highway Tires and Vice-Chairman, Yokohama India, said, “We are upbeat on business prospects and capacity expansion plan in India and its ability to cater to the growing global demand. Even as we implement the Phase-1 of the Vizag plant, we are considering taking up expansion and doubling the capacity. The decision on the quantum of investments is yet to be finalised.”
Gupta told BussinessLine , “With a diverse product portfolio of over 3,500 SKUs, YOHT offers aftermarket and OEMs, with superior quality application-specific and purpose-built tyres under the brands – Alliance, Galaxy, Primex and Yokohama OTR. The company now has tyre plants at Dahej in Gujarat and Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu and one plant in Hadera in Israel. These plants produce tyres used on agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery.”
“The new plant at Atchutapuram, which is coming up on an 80-acre site, will have a daily production capacity of 55 tons (rubber weight) with planned capital investment of $165 million and is scheduled to come on line in the first quarter of 2023 with trials in second half of 2022. The Vizag plant, located near the port, makes it advantageous for the export of finished products,” he said.
“Make in India”
“For YOHT, India as a manufacturing base is a real case of “make in India” and “making for the world”. India contributed more than 80-85 per cent of last year volumes and exported to more than 100 countries worldwide. Most of our exports are produced from the India base. We are able to achieve this due to low manufacturing costs and the state of art manufacturing facilities here,” he said.
Gupta said “YOHT had a global turnover of close to a billion dollars in 2019. We started selling global products in India in last 1 ½ years for OHT products but Yokohoma Rubber Company has been selling PCR in India from 2007.”
New products
“We continue to launch a slew of new products from here as people look for products that will help boost productivity and reduce their input costs,” he said.
The new plant in India will expand the Yokohama Group’s global off-highway tyre production network to eight plants in four countries, including three in India, one in Israel, one in Vietnam, and three in Japan. The global off-highway tyre daily production capacity of the Yokohama Group will now increase to 480 tons (rubber weight).
On passing through the Covid pandemic and lockdown phase, he said, “Under the Yokohama ownership, we had a healthy balance sheet and were geared to weather this crisis. During these ups and downs, YOHT was in a strong position. Our competitive position, market share, brand and diversification of our businesses in products and regions helped us see some all-time highs as well during these tough times.”
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