BKT expands its business in untapped market in North-East

By OEM Update Editorial April 11, 2017 11:16 pm IST

Balkrishna Industries (BKT), one of the world’s leading manufacturers of off-highway tyres, displayed its world-class radial range of tyres for North-East market at ConMac 2017.

F irmly positioned among the top global off-highway tyre manufacturers, Balkrishna Industries Ltd. (BKT) is aggressively increasing its footprint in the untapped market in North-East India.

Commenting on what brings BKT to the North-Eastern states, the company’s Head Marketing P.K. Ganguly said, “We are into construction equipment, mining infrastructure and mining core. Hence these are the three main areas that we are concentrating in India and with our unique range and world-class quality tyres.”

BKT has four manufacturing units located at Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Bhiwadi and Chopanki in Rajasthan and Bhuj in Gujarat that are going at a full throttle in production.

Thanks to a 500-million-US-dollar investment, BKT’s Bhuj plant is transpired as a state-of-the-art, world-class tyre making facility. This plant is capable of making tyres of a diverse range – from 5-inch lawn tyres to 49-inch giant OTR tyres. The tyres currently produced in Bhuj plant include various sizes of Maglift solid tyre and Liftmax LM 81 tyre, both for forklifts, in addition to Portmax PM 93 in size 280/75 R 22.5 for straddle carriers, Radial multipurpose truck tyre Multimax MP 540, and the giant OTR Radial tyre 27.00 R49 Earthmax for mining applications.
BKT has over 92 per cent exported to more than 130 countries across five continents. However, the company feels that there is huge market availability in India especially in the North-East region. “The North-East region is one area which is going to grow very fast and we feel that North-East is the one area where we can definitely grow. We can contribute largely on the infrastructure development activities that the government is planning. There is a long-term business prospects in North-East as road construction will be with full blast in the next 10 years. That will bring a lot of tyre requirement. BKT is concentrating on these,” Ganguly observes.

BKT – Best fit for difficult terrain
North-East region of India, where the government has made ambitious plans to improve road infrastructure, including an accelerated road development program is facing challenges majorly due to difficult terrain. Executing a road project is equally challenging there. Answering to a question on why developers in North-East should prefer BKT products, Ganguly said, “Our products are specifically made for working in difficult terrains. We have the entire range of products which is going through very severe operating conditions. It might be for mining or even for construction equipment. We have the entire wide variety of product to apply in the rough terrains.”

Products range
BKT has products from 5-inch rim diameter to 54-inch rim diameter and has products available for the traditional vehicles like dumpers, graders, trailers, forklifts, and implements to the technologically advanced ma chines like high horsepower tractors, combines, harvesters, GPS-controlled vehicles, articulated dump trucks, high-speed cranes, sophisticated port vehicles and container handlers. BKT maintains a huge 2,300 different stock keeping units (SKU) for various kinds of applications.