Tyre Asia April/May 2018 63
production facilities of OE manufactures
such as Volkswagen, Daimler and Suzuki
Motor Corp. This strategic location will
further strengthen Apollo’s regional
market expansion strategy. It has already
nudged into the supply chains of world-
leading carmakers such as Volkswagen,
Ford and SEAT.
“While these are the first few, there
are several other OE approvals in the
pipeline for our passenger car tyres,” said
Neeraj Kanwar. “Such OE approvals are a
testimony of our high quality products and
our focus on superior design.”
Mathias Heimann, President, (Europe) of
Apollo Tyres explained that he would like
at least 25 per cent of tyres to be sold to
OEMs. It will be a hard job, but for Apollo it
is such a challenge that always helped the
company accelerates its growth.
Driving Apollo’s rapid expansion is its R&D
breakthroughs. It recently opened a new
global R & D Centre at Oragadam, the
industrial hub to the west of Chennai. It
will service the product development needs
for the entire Asia Pacific, West Asia and
Africa regions. It is the second global R&D
Centre, after the Netherlands facility, which
has been operational since 2013. About
300 people are working in its two R&D
facilities.
Besides the two Global R&D Centres,
Apollo has also established two satellite
R&D Centres in Bengaluru and Germany.
The R&D spend as a percentage of
turnover has grown from 0.74 per cent in
2011-12 to about two per cent now. These
research centres work closely with OE
manufacturers and replacement clients,
test centres, raw material suppliers and
research institutes.
“Going forward, R&D will continue to be
the cornerstone of our vision, as we plan
to ramp up the R&D spend to 3 per cent of
our sales revenue,” Neeraj Kanwar said.
In January this year, as part of its
expansion in India – the world’s fastest
growing emerging market – Apollo Tyres
is investing in building a state-of-the-art
manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh.
It has provisioned for the future capacity
expansion requirements in India for the
next 5 years and more.
This will add to Apollo’s India
manufacturing facilities – two (including a
leased facility) in Kerala, and one each in
Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.
As Apollo steadily rolls into the European
market, the most competitive in the world,
it is padding up the marketing muscle
to further enlarge the global market
share. There is no end to innovation. It is
continuum.