Strike shuts Apollo Tyres Africa plant

Labour troubles have shut Apollo Tyres’ production facilities in Africa for the last six days.

The company makes and sells 180 tonnes of passenger and truck tyres under the ‘Dunlop’ brand from its African operations spread across three separate plants in Durban, Ladysmith and Zimbabwe but due to the complete shutdown, no production has been happening at any of these facilities there since the first of this month.

In an e-mail response to queries from DNA Money, Apollo Tyres South Africa’s CEO Luis Ceneviz admitted as much: “Yes, the strike has been on for the entire tyre manufacturing industry in South Africa and there is no production happening at all. We are producing approximately 180 tonnes per day in South Africa, which will get affected by the strike.”

All tyre production in Africa is done under Apollo Tyres South Africa, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian tyre giant. Besides selling in South Africa, it also distributes ‘Dunlop’ brand of tyres in 30 territories where Apollo owns the trademark rights to ‘Dunlop’ brand.

So not just supplies to the South African market but exports of Dunlop branded tyres are also expected to get impacted because of this strike.

At Durban, Apollo makes 25,000 tonnes of truck tyres a year; at Ladysmith it produces 25,000 tonnes a year of passenger tyres and Dunlop Zimbabwe (which is a wholly owned arm) is also a manufacturing site.

According to reports, production at South Africa’s all four major tyre manufacturers - Apollo Tyres (Dunlop brand), Goodyear, Continental and Bridgestone Firestone - has been at a standstill since Tuesday last due to a widespread labour strike.

To a question of similar labour troubles in the past impacting production at African sites, Cenevix merely said that “In the April - June quarter of this fiscal, Apollo’s South African operations clocked revenues of Rs 270 crore, up 8% vis-à-vis the same period last year”.

In August this year, Apollo’s Kerala unit was shut for about 12 days due to labour issues, leading to significant loss of production in the domestic market as well.