Yokohama Off-Highway Tires (YOHT), the fully-owned subsidiary of The Yokohama Rubber Company (YRC), Japan, has commenced work on Rs 1,200 crore greenfield plant at Atchutapuram Industrial Area near Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
The company is upbeat on business prospects and capacity expansion plan in India and its ability to cater to the growing global demand.
Even as the company implements Phase-1 of the Vizag plant, it is considering taking up expansion and doubling the capacity. However, the decision on the quantum of investments is yet to be finalised.
The company has a diverse product portfolio of over 3,500 SKUs. It offers aftermarket and OEMs, with quality application-specific and purpose-built tyres under the brands — Alliance, Galaxy, Primex and Yokohama OTR.
Apart from this, the company now has tyre plants at Dahej in Gujarat and Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu and one plant in Hadera in Israel. These plants manufacture tyres used on agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery.
The new plant at Atchutapuram, which is coming up on an 80 acre site, will have a daily production capacity of 55 tonne rubber weight with planned capital investment of USD 165 million.
It is scheduled to come on line in Q1/2023 with trials in H2/2022. The Vizag plant, located near the port, makes it advantageous for the export of finished products.
The new plant in India will expand the Group’s global off-highway tyre production network to eight plants in four countries. This includes three in India, one in Israel, one in Vietnam, and three in Japan.
The global off-highway tyre daily production capacity of the Yokohama Group will increase to 480 tonne rubber weight.