Kolkata, May 25 (IANS) B.K. Birla group company Kesoram Industries will continue to focus and strengthen its tyre business even though it sold its tyre manufacturing plant at Laksar in Haridwar, a top official the company said on Wednesday.
"We are not going out of the tyre business. We have sold a tyre manufacturing facility not the tyre business to JK Tyres. We will strengthen our tyre business and will come up with new products," said tyre maker's whole-time director and CFO Tridib Das.
The company sold its Haridwar tyre manufacturing plant to JK Tyre for Rs 2195 crore.
"With the sale of the plant, we gave out a 555 tonnes a day capacity of producing truck and bus bias tyres, two-three wheeler tyres and truck and bus radial tyres. Of the total capacity, 320 tonnes a day was for manufacturing of truck and bus bias tyre," he said.
"We are concentrating to build our Balasore plant as a state-of-the- art facility. The production of two-three wheeler tyres has already started in the plant," Das said.
The Odisha plant capacity stands at 275 tonnes a day on bias tyre and 60 tonnes a day in two-three wheeler tyres," he said.
He said that the company would source only truck and bus radial tyres from China as of now and we will produce the rest, he said.
The Balasore plant where capacity utilisation stands at 70 percent can produce 1.8 lakhs tyres a month. "We will meet the demand of 35 lakh tyres a month," he said.
The company plans to invest Rs 300 crore for producing passenger car radial tyre facility, he added.
