Apollo enters European truck, bus radial tyre market

Apollo Tyres on Wednesday announced its foray into European truck and bus radial (TBR) tyre market with the launch of a new range of products to be sold online.

The company is making its TBR tyres available through its platform ApolloTyresDirect.com and is initially being piloted in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Other countries will also follow soon. For online customers in countries outside the scope of delivery, arrangements would be made from the company's Hamburg warehouse, Apollo Tyres said in a statement.

Announcing the launch at the ongoing Commercial Vehicle Show in Birmingham, Apollo Tyres Chief Retail & Marketing Officer Marco Paracciani said that for the European TBR market, it was felt that a strong product offering was not enough.

"We saw an opportunity to innovate in the go-to-market approach," he added.

Commenting on the development, Apollo Tyres Group Head of Global Product Management for Commercial Vehicles Benoit Rivallant said: "This launch on Wednesday, is the culmination of our five-year testing and development programme for the Apollo brand of truck-bus radials in the UK and Europe."

The new range has been extensively tested over 250 million kilometers across six European countries across a wide range of applications by around 50 fleets and drivers, the company said.

Apollo Tyres has four R&D centers and six manufacturing plants globally, including the recently inaugurated state-of- the art factory in Hungary.