Michelin announces Rs 4,000 crore investment for its new Chennai plant

This time around, Michelin is here to stay in India...

French tyre manufacturer Michelin will set up a new manufacturing facility at Gummidipoondi (about 40km from Chennai), for which it will invest Rs 4,000 crore over a period of seven years. Michelin intends to produce truck and bus radial tyres at this plant, which is expected to be operational by 2012. These tyres will initially be meant only for the Indian market, though Michelin may also cater to some overseas markets at a later stage.

Michelin’s tyre manufacturing facility will be situated on a 290 acre chunk of land situated in the SIPCOT industrial estate at Gummidipoondi. Michelin, which already supplies tyres to companies like Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo in India, currently imports most of its tyres from its plant in Thailand.

This isn’t Michelin’s first foray into the Indian tyre market. The company first came to India with MRF in the early-1990s (the partnership was dissolved in the mid-1990s) and then set up a joint venture (for truck and bus radial tyres) with Apollo Tyres in 2003, which also ended in 2005. This time, however, it seems Michelin is here to stay…