Ashok Chhajer, Senior General Manager – OE Sales, BKT Tires, speaks on the current market size of OTR tyres for the mining segment in India, and outlook on the OTR tyre market beyond 2022.

What is the current market size of OTR tyres for the mining segment in India? What is your outlook on the OTR tyre market beyond 2022?
Large mining trucks (LMTs), medium mining trucks (MMTs), and small mining trucks (SMTs) make up the OTR tyres category in the mining industry.

The market for LMT tyres has the potential to expand rapidly owing to the increase in the demand for coal, which is one of the main energy sources in India. The requirement for coal in India is about 1.1 billion tonnes, but we are currently producing approximately 700 million tonnes. The increased demand has led to increased mining activity, thus increasing the demand for LMT tyres. Hence, we have displayed tyres for the LMT market at the IMME.

Since India has been focusing majorly on the mining industry and aims to become one of the primary markets for mining activities in the next 5–10 years. Govt. has drawn policy too in the same direction – with the privatization of coal, the demand for OTR tyres is set to rise in the coming years.

We are one of the prime players in this segment and our expertise and state-of-the-art technology, as the global players in the OTR tyre segment, are equipped to contribute to the growth of the mining sector of India.

Are there any plans for capacity expansion?
Capacity expansion is a continuous process at BKT. We are boosting the capacity for LMT tyres by 100 per cent. In potentially three years, with the government providing impetus for growth to the mining segment, we are predicting the LMT segment to grow by more than 100 per cent. With that said, we have already increased the capacity of our latest plant in Bhuj. There are expansion plans in place for all other capacity tyres. We will be expanding the capacity of our manufacturing with the rise in demand for these tyres.

What kind of challenges do you face in the OTR segment? How did you overcome those challenges?
Like other industries, we are also facing challenges, such as the cost and availability of raw materials, rising fuel costs, and the inbound and outbound logistics costs due to the war. However, we are well placed and all geared up to take on these challenges and have managed to overcome them with a strong strategy.

How important is R&D to your company?
R&D is the backbone of BKT and we invest approximately 5 per cent, which is why we have the best quality tyres. We are the only Indian tyre company to have not one but three R&D centres – two centres dedicated to compound development in Bhuj and Chopanki and one dedicated R&D lab for only carbon black research in Bhuj. Moreover, we have a tyre test house in each of our five plants for Indoor testing in addition to an outdoor testing track, and a mould plant.

Huge investments have been made in creating world-class labs, and sourcing the latest tech equipment. Additionally, we have qualified and experienced engineers in our state-of-the-art infrastructure, which gives us the edge.

More so, we follow a stringent quality control process before any product is introduced to the market. Every tyre at various stages of production has to undergo 500 quality checks and the onuses are on the R&D team. We introduce on average 80- 90 new products every year. These are all based on in-depth market research and market analysis by our R&D Team.

Are there any new products in the pipeline?
Our target markets are both the replacement market and OEMs, so we continuously analyse our market and introduce new sizes. As of today, we offer an extensive product range of over 3,200 high-performance specialist tyres, which are exported to more than 160 countries and are constantly working on expanding to newer geographies and even broadening our product offerings.