Apollo invests in South Africa plant

qiangzi

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Haryana, India - Apollo Tyres Chairman Onkar S. Kanwar inaugurated a new Component Preparation Unit at the company’s Ladysmith tire manufacturing facility in South Africa. This 6,500 square meter facility represents a $35 million investment and has a new calendering machine and triplex extrusion line. The new unit will remove capacity bottlenecks and further improve quality and productivity, while enabling capacity expansion. This component unit will feed both the Durban and Ladysmith manufacturing units of Apollo Tyres South Africa, thereby increasing the commercial vehicle tire capacity of Durban by 20 percent, and the Ladysmith passenger vehicle and light truck tire capacity by 30 percent. Since the acquisition of the former Dunlop Tyre facilities in South Africa, Apollo has invested around $85 million towards upgrading machinery and increasing manufacturing efficiencies in both plants.