Apollo Tyres to hike prices from April

NEW DELHI, Mar 30 (PTI): Apollo Tyres today said it will hike prices of its products by up to 6 per cent from April to offset spiralling raw material costs. The market leader also cautioned that the tyre industry could be in red unless there is a substantial increase, a minimum of up to 10 per cent, in product prices. "From April onwards we will be increasing tyre prices as the overall raw material costs have gone beyond manageable levels," Apollo Tyres Chief (India Operations) Satish Sharma told the reporter. From the first quarter of the next fiscal, Sharma said prices of bias commercial vehicle tyres will go up by 3 per cent while that of truck and bus radial tyres will be dearer by 6 per cent. "For the passenger cars, we had increased in February by about 3 per cent and again we will raise it by another 3 per cent," he added. The prices of the company's passenger vehicle tyres vary between Rs 2,150 and Rs 12,500 per unit. The radial tyres of truck and bus are available for Rs 16,900-Rs 20,200. In the ongoing fiscal, raw material prices have gone up about 35-36 per cent against which the company has raised tyre prices by 16-17 per cent, he added.