Apollo is Ready to Dig Deep into U.S. Farm Tire Market

Oct. 14, 2015

Apollo Tyres Ltd. wants to secure more business in the U.S., and it sees a big opportunity with its Vredestein line of agricultural tires.

“We are looking for a much larger contribution from farm tires for our total business,” says Emil Herbak, president of Apollo Vredestein Tires Inc., the U.S. arm of the Apollo subsidiary, Apollo Vredestein B.V.

Currently Apollo relies on its passenger tire sales to lead the way in the U.S., but Herbak wants farm tires to move up to as much as 30% of the total sales, which would match what the company is doing in Europe.

The company already has the capacity to grow, and it has a new plant scheduled to go on line in 2017 in Hungary. That plant will have a capacity of 5.5 million passenger and light truck tires, plus 675,000 commercial vehicle tires available for export.

Bill Haney joined Apollo Vredestein in 2014 as its off-highway-tire (OHT) specialist. His assignment is to move the OHT program forward.

He knows American customers want a full range of products, “We have a decent range, not a full range,” Haney admits, but the customer also wants availability, “meaning a quick timeliness of shipments, and that’s where we excel.”

Vredestein production according to a monthly updated forecast, putting tires in a warehouse and then shipping them as quickly as six weeks to the U.S. from Europe. “The high fill rate is the result of the process that we produce those tires based on our monthly budget,” says Herbak.

Read more about the company’s plans for the U.S. market beginning on page 77 in Modern Tire Dealer’s October edition.