Michelin Doubles Down on India With New Car Tyre Plant, Tech Prowess

Vitor Silva, Michelin’s President – Africa, India and Middle East, would like to see India as the French tyre major’s “most important market in the next ten years”. What powers this ambition is a new manufacturing plant near Chennai, Michelin’s first in India for passenger vehicle tyres, and a growing technology development base in Pune.

The passenger vehicle tyre manufacturing plant inaugurated today will bump up Michelin’s total annual manufacturing capacity to 54,000 tonnes, from 30,000 tonnes last year. The tyre major has been manufacturing truck and bus tyres in India for the past 11 years. The brownfield expansion for the passenger vehicle tyre plant has been done with an investment of Rs. 686 crore. If things go as planned, Michelin may expand its manufacturing footprint further next year. The company is targeting for the new plant to reach peak production capacity in a year or so.  

The new plant will produce tyres with sizes ranging from 16 to 22 inches. With the SUV and premium car sales trend on the rise, and improving road infrastructure, the demand for these sizes of tyres is expected to see a healthy growth trend. Shantanu Deshpande, MD, Michelin India says the current market size of 16 inch and above tyres stands at around 10-12 million units, which could go up to 17 million units in the next 2-3 years. He adds that the car tyres are also EV-ready. 

The tyre major’s locally produced car tyre range will include LTX Trail ST, Pilot Sport 4 SUV, Pilot Sport 5, and Primacy 5. 

Michelin will enter the passenger tyre market through the aftermarket route. Deshpande adds that the focus is to offer the best combination of a tyre’s key attributes of durability, safety, and comfort in order to make a mark in the new segment for Michelin in India. For a better pitch to customers, Michelin has also invested in building a network of 75 standalone Michelin Tyres & Service Stores, with staff trained to explain the competitiveness of Michelin tyres. With an objective to ‘redefine’ consumer experience, the company also introduced its first ‘Experience Store’, in Nashik earlier this year.

For commercial vehicle tyres, Michelin operates in the aftermarket, and also supplies to OEMs. Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Scania, Volvo, Bharat Benz are its customers in India. It produces around 38 tyre references for truck, bus, and the defence sector.

“We propose a product that takes you from A to B with safety, with reliability, and allows you to reduce fuel consumption by 6-10%. We are no longer talking about the price of the product, but the benefit that you unlock to your operation by using our tyres,” Silva tells ACKO Drive.

Florent Chaussade, ED, Michelin India says that the India-made Michelin tyres currently have 45% recycled materials, and the target is to hike this figure to 50% by 2030, with a final goal of manufacturing 100% sustainable tyres by 2050. He adds that the India plant also produced the country’s first 4-star rated tyre in 2022.   

For the commercial vehicle tyre plant, which was commissioned in 2014, Michelin had invested Rs. 2,800 crores.  

Tapping India for tyres, and tech

Like a few other global organisations in the automotive space, Michelin is also leveraging its India presence to more than just manufacture and sell products. Its technical centre in Pune is a major engineering and technology development hub for its global operations. The centre has around 2,500 engineers, and is Michelin’s biggest outside its home country of France.

The India technical centre is also the tyre major’s global CoE (Centre of Excellence) for AI technology development for tyre applications. Silva says that a hundred POCs (Proof of Concept) using AI tech is under tests currently.    

“India for us is much more than tyres,” says Silva.