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TVS Srichakra Limited, the tyre manufacturing arm of the TVS Group, which markets tyres under TVS Tyres brand, is in the process of developing radial tyres for the TVS Motor-BMW two-wheeler products' joint venture.
The company is planning to invest around Rs 150 crore this year to expand its manufacturing capacity from the current two-million tyres per month to 2.3-million tyres by December this year. It is also looking at launching tyres in the earth-mover category in the future, said P Vijayaraghavan, director of TVS Srichakra.
"We are developing radial tyres for the TVS-BMW joint venture. We are developing two types of tyres," he said.
"During 2014-15, we have increased our output from 1.7-million tyres per month to two million tyres per month. We are now investing Rs 150 crore so as to increase the overall capacity from two million tyres per month to 2.3 million tyres, which we expect to reach by December 2015," he said.
The capacity expansion would be done at its plants in Madurai and in Rudrapur. In 2014-15, the company had manufactured a monthly 1.6-million tyres in Madurai plant and 400,000 tyres in Rudrapur plant.
In the off-road tyre segment, the company had started production of tractor radial, with a focus on European market and plans to cater to the US later.
"With the two-wheeler manufacturers increasing their exports, we could also capitalise with volumes of our two-wheeler tyres going up in South America, Africa etc," he added. It would take at least one more year for the company to complete the development of the tractor radial and would later look at the making tyres for earth moving equipment, he said.
