Yokohama to increase production in India, eyes 5 per cent market share by 2017

Yokohama Tyres is seeking to increase its share in Indian tyre market. To target the customers more aggressively, Yokohama is planning to increase the production capacity at its Haryana manufacturing facility and has already undertaken feasibility study for the plan.

Sanjay Chatterjee, General Manager of Yokohama, said, “We began our first production in November 2014 at our plant at Bahadurgarh (Haryana). The plant investment was around Rs 300 crore. Right now, phase 1 is operational. Phases II and III are under feasibility.”

He added, “The strategy to ramp up the manufacturing capacity and to increase the market share was decided because Indian tyre industry is growing at a rate of eight to ten per cent. The domestic replacement tyre market is growing at eight to 10 per cent. For 2015, our sales target is 40 per cent higher than last year. We are growing. One of the successes is our Earth-1 tyre because it is a specific, made-in-India tyre."

The company's manufacturing unit is spread across 25 acres and located at Bahadurgarh, Haryana. The facility would be expanded in four phases, which could take the tyre output from current 2,000 tyres per day to 8,000 tyres per day.

On the company's vision for the future, Chatterjee said, "Our parent company Yokohama Rubber Company will complete 100 years in the world by 2017. It has a strategy plan called Grand Design-100 (GD-100). As per the strategy, we want to take Yokohama India's market share in the replacement market from the present two per cent to five per cent by 2017.”

Yokohama’s Indian manufacturing facility has a production capacity of 10 thousand tyres a day but initial plans are to cap the production at 2 thousand tyres a day. Sanjay Chatterjee said that even though the company is targeting OEMs, it will continue to make a strong presence in after-market.