Bridgestone may set up radial tyres facility

The world's largest tyre manufacturer, Bridgestone Corporation, Japan, through its wholly owned subsidiary Bridgestone India, has shown keen interest in setting up a truck and bus radial manufacturing facility in India in the next three years.

Talking on the sidelines of a press meet, Hisao Ikawa, managing director, Bridgestone India, said, "Although setting up a new facility is always a costly affair, also involving a timeframe of two-three years for the unit to be up and operational, it is a matter of time before we come out with such plans. Depending on the demand, the decision on it will be taken this year."

Ikawa indicated that costs to set up such a facility that produces truck and bus radial can exceed $200 million, taking into account the cost of the land.

The company currently imports radials from its parent company's unit based in Thailand. It aims to improve sales of commercial vehicle tyres by 2008 selling10,000 units annually.

Currently the company is mainly focussed on improving its sales to the passenger vehicle (PV) market.

Bridgestone today launched two new patterns for the Indian market, namely the B250, which can be fitted onto Hyundai Santro, Fiat Palio, Ford Fiesta, Tata Indigo etc and the ER-300 which can be fitted to vehicles like the Mercedes Benz S-Class, Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata.

"Our top priority is to produce quality products and make them available to the customers at best possible price", said Ikawa.

The B250 comes as a standard fitment on Honda Civic, Hyundai Verna and the GM's Aveo. It will be available in 'H' and 'T' rated tyres with the option of tubeless and tube tyres.

The B250 will replace the S322, S248 and the B800 and will be available in 13', 14' and 15' sizes. According to company tests, the average wear life of the tyre will be about 60,000 kms.

Due to the current surge in demand, the company, which has a 30 per cent market share, has made a marginal increase in its total production to 11,000 units a day from 10,500 units a day, this would be further hiked to 15,000 units in the by the end of this year.