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Sunday,
October
12, 2003,
Chandigarh, India  
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JK Tyres to spend 100 cr on modernisation
Onions to remain expensive
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Haryana team heads for Seoul to attract FDI
Airlines suffering
due to overstaffing
Balance amount in PPF earns interest
Woman hurt as mobile
explodes
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JK Tyres to spend 100 cr on modernisation New Delhi, October 11 The company plans to pump in Rs 100 crore for modernising its manufacturing facilities for truck radial tyres, while an investment of Rs 70 crore is being planned for the passenger radial segment. New products, including tubeless tyres, are expected to roll out from its stable in the short to medium term. “This is over and above the investment of Rs 100 crore which we have done over the past two years in a restructuring exercise which involved a number of mergers and demergers”, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of JK Industries Raghupati Singhania told The Tribune in an exclusive interview. JK Industries took over the management control of Vikrant Tyres in 1997. Having turned around the balance sheet, Vikrant Tyres was eventually merged with JK Industries in 2002. “To be sure, the restructuring exercise was complete last year after the exercise of mergers and demergers was carried out. JK Industries hived off its sugar, agro-genetic seeds and tyre division into three separate centres. It is now period of consolidation”, Mr Singhania emphasised. At present, JK is the largest manufacturer of truck and bus tyres with a market share of 25.7 per cent in 2002-03. There was a distinct characteristic of the Indian truck tyre market as different from passenger cars and other categories. “For one, in the truck segment, almost 85 per cent is accounted for by the replacement market as contrary to passenger car tyres where the tyre industry is largely OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) driven”, he explained. Mr Singhania said JK Tyre’s main focus will continue to be on “creating sub-segment within broad categories”. For instance, he said, the company has created three different sub-segments within the category of truck-tyres — extreme overload, middle-overload and normal load. Buoyed by its success in the radial segment, which was pre-dominantly a domain of the MNCs, that control 85.5 per cent of the car tyre market, JK Tyres hopes to consolidate is position further. The company, which has a technical agreement with Continental Tyres, has set a turnover target of Rs 2,100 crore during this fiscal (2003-04) and plans to achieve a topline figure of Rs 2,500 crore by the next year. On tubeless tyres, it has not yet caught the fancy of the customer as “we are not psychologically attuned to repair our own tyres”. “In overseas markets, attitudes are different. But it will soon catch up with the Indian consumer once it becomes OEM-driven and comes fitted with new cars from the manufacturing plants”, Mr Singhania said. He, however, ruled out any foray into the two-wheeler segment at least in the immediate future. “As of now we do not find it economical enough to fit into our business plan. But nevertheless it is a very tempting market”, he said. Advocating a ban on selling of second-hand tyres in the Indian market, Mr Singhania said if a ban was not imposed on import of used tyres for safety and environmental considerations, India could become a dumping ground to dispose of mountains of used tyres in developed countries. “Second-hand tyres have no business to come to India. It is an ecological hazard and there are instances where people in developed countries are paying as low as $2 to lift used tyres”, he said. Moreover, in the garb of second- hand tyres, new tyres are coming into India although in very small numbers. “This is a dangerous trend that needs to be curtailed”, he observed. On the export front (the company is, at present, exporting to 60 countries), Mr Singhania said JK Tyres was looking at “more opportunities to outsource and enter newer markets”. The company’s current exports is valued at Rs 325 crore. “Last year, the company had entered a manufacturing agreement with three manufacturers in China and we are the only Indian tyre brand to be launched in that country. We are, at present, selling about 4,000 tyres per month in the heavy trucks segment. There are enough opportunities to tap the Chinese market which is valued at about $20 million”, Mr Singhania added. |
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Onions to remain expensive
New Delhi, October 11 From Rs.10 a kg, onion has been witnessing a steady price rise to the range of Rs.15 a kg in the retail market for the past few weeks raising fears of a repeat scenario of 1998, when scarcity of the vegetable had driven up the prices to over Rs.30 a kg in some parts of the country. "There is no scarcity of onions. The problem is more with the lack of good quality onions as a lot of stock in the storage got slightly affected by the long spell of rains in Maharashtra and Gujarat this year," Trilok Chandra Sharma, president of the Potato, Onion Union of Azadpur Mandi here, said. Owing to the heavy rains in September in the onion belts in parts of Maharashtra, there were fears that a lot of standing crop could be destroyed or the harvest delayed due to dampness that had affected some of the onion stocks in warehouses. —
IANS
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Haryana team heads for Seoul to attract FDI Chandigarh, October 11 Mr Harbaksh Singh, MD of the HSIDC, and Mr Prem Singh of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board of Haryana, will also tie up with an Indian delegation visiting South Korea for promoting India as an ideal industrial destination. The visit is being organised by Ficci and the Indian team will be led by Mr Arun Jaitley. Importantly, it was Mr Jaitley whose statement in the Lok Sabha recently regarding zero foreign direct investment in Haryana during last two years had triggered off a furore in the state. Meanwhile, the state government clarified that FDI in Haryana was shown against Delhi since most of the foreign companies, having their manufacturing units in Haryana, were registered in Delhi. Haryana's attachment to the team visiting Seoul in South Korea for three days from October 13 will give opportunity to the state government to say that the state does figure in the central government's scheme of things when it comes to attracting foreign direct investments. The two representatives would then proceed to Taipei in Taiwan on October 16. Their objective is to persuade industrialists in the computer sector to set up their units in Gurgaon.
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