“So you have come for the Apollo plant opening, ya?” asked the cabbie who drove us from the airport in Budapest to the hotel. “Our Prime Minister is going to inaugurate it,” said he proudly. On Thursday night, the sky above the historic chain-bridge in Budapest lit up with a laser show and the crowd was awed as “Apollo Tyres” lit up the Budapest sky.

That is the kind of buzz that was created by Apollo Tyres as it inaugurated its 6th global tyre manufacturing unit and the second one in Europe in Hungary.

The Hungarian Prime Minister who inaugurated the plant by breaking a coconut, in the traditional Indian way along with the Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman and Neeraj Kanwar, Vice-Chairman Apollo Tyres, stressed that this was not just another foreign investment, for he considered the Kanwars as part of the Hungarian family. He was proud of the fact that this was not just another “assembly plant” but a “state-of-art manufacturing unit”, one that embodied the Hungarian values of according a premium to intellectual superiority.

Apollo is investing € 475 mn in to the plant which will manufacture 5.5 million passenger car and light truck tyres and 675,000 commercial vehicle tyres at the end of the phase 1 of this plant set-up. This investment is one of the largest in Hungary at present. The facility will complement Apollo Tyre’s existing facility in Netherlands and will produce both the Apollo and Vredestein brand of tyres.

The Gyongyoshalasz Plant, situated about 100 km from the Hungarian capital of Budapest has been declared a project of ‘National Importance’ by the Hungarian government. It was set up over a period of two years and is expected to provide employment to around 400 highly qualified engineers, technicians and other workers.

The plant is expected to give a fillip to Indo-Hungarian bi-lateral ties. Total investments by India in to Hungary equals $2 billion which has created around 10,000 jobs. India was the largest greenfield investor in to Hungary in 2014. This plant will add to the heft.

(The writer was in Hungary on the invitation of Apollo Tyres)

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