PUNE: Yokohama, the Indian arm of the Japanese Yokohama Rubber Company, is investing US$82 million (Rs 679 crore) to expand its passenger car tyre production capacity in India to meet the rising demands from the local market. The production facility at Visakhapatnam will go onstream in the fourth quarter next year.
“To meet the increasing demand for our tyres in the growing Indian market, we are investing US$82 million to set up a new facility at Visakhapatnam,” Nitin Mantri, chairman at Yokohama India, told Financial Chronicle.
“We are targeting to be the fifth largest tyre maker in India by 2025,” he said, adding that the company was roping in more and more OEMS and the replacement tyre market for growth. At present, Yokohama is the 8th largest tyre maker in India.
“We aim to sell 4.5 million tyres in the Indian market by 2025 from the current 2.8 million,” Mantri said.
He said the new production facility will be installed within the premises of the Visakhapatnam Plant. The new line is scheduled to start production in the fourth quarter of 2024 and will be capable of building high-end 18-inch and 22-inch passenger car tyres. “These tyres will cater to the luxury cars, performance cars and SUVS,” Mantri pointed out.
Yokohama, a global brand, competes with the market leader Japanese Bridgestone, Indian MRF and Apollo tyres among others.
Yokohama India started importing tyres and selling them in India in 2008.
India’s automobile industry has been expanding rapidly, with its total automobile sales volume in 2022 surpassing that of Japan, making India the third-largest automobile market in the world. Yokohama Rubber expects this growth to continue in the future.
To support this growth, the company has steadily expanded Yokohama India’s annual production capacity—from an initial 700,000 tyres in 2014 to 1.53 million units in 2019 and 1.96 million units in 2021. Since January 2023, the company has been operating its plant at an annual capacity of 2.8 million units.
In November 2014, Yokohama India started its first manufacturing plant in Bahadurgarh, Haryana.
The commercial tyre or off the road business of Yokohama Group is called Yokohama Off-Highway Tyres, wherein the company has three factories in India for this business – in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, Dahej in Gujarat and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
