Birla Tyres eyes Rs 650cr turnover this fiscal

Birla Tyres, a flagship company of the BK Birla Group, expects its turnover to touch Rs 650 crore in the current financial year.

Addressing mediapersons at the launch of a new truck tyre, BT 339+, in Hyderabad at a customers' meet on Sunday, Amit Choudhury, vice-president (technical services), Birla Tyres, said: "With several products already launched and few more in the pipeline, Birla Tyres is on a fast growth track. We garnered a market share of 11 per cent in truck tyres across the country, and 30 per cent of our products are exported to about 30 countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Belgium. We expect our turnover to touch Rs 650 crore in the current fiscal."

Amit said that Andhra Pradesh leads in sales chart of Birla Tyres for trucks in the southern region.

"We expect to gain further market share with the launch of BT339+. South alone contributes nine per cent of the company's overall sales across the country. This is likely to be increased to 12 per cent in the near future," he said. "Birla Tyres sells about 12,000 truck tyres per month in south India of which around 4,500 are sold in Andhra Pradesh alone," he added.

Talking about the newly-launched product, he said: "The new product is an extension our main brand BT 339, with higher physical dimensional features. It is specially designed for multi-axle vehicles."

Amit said that the company at present has 2,000 retail outlets, 52 stock points and 80 carrying-forward agents across the country.

Talking about the company's capacity, he said that the company, with a plant at Balasore in Orissa which was installed in technical collaboration with Italy-based Pirelle Limited, at present produces 87,500 truck tryes a month. "The production capacity will go up to 93,000 tryes per month by June 2005," he added.