In a major relief to the harried employees of Falcon Tyres, JK Tyres has expressed its interest to run and start production at the defunct Falcon Tyres that has stopped production since the last two years.

Mysuru-based Falcon Tyres, owned by the Ruia Group headed by Pavan Kumar Ruia and located at Metagalli in city, has closed production leaving thousands of employees in the lurch. The workers and families are now on an indefinite stir demanding the Government to intervene and revive the factory.

Speaking to Star of Mysore on the sidelines of the two-day Mysore-MSME Expo-2017 being held at the Institution of Engineers-India (IEI) this morning, JK Tyres Vice-President (Works) Umesh Krishna Shenoy said that they were ready to start production at Falcon Tyres.

“Some talks took place three years back on JK Tyres taking over production at Falcon and a proposal had come to us. As we were told to take over Falcon loans that stood at Rs. 500 crore then, we had declined. We are ready to start production at Falcon Tyres if the proposal comes either from the factory or the State Government,” he said.

Umesh Shenoy, however, said that JK Tyres will not take the responsibility of clearing loans and other financial liabilities. “We are only interested in production. Loans and liabilities are not our responsibilities, he said. He added that since JK Tyres and Falcon Tyres were in close proximity and since JK Tyres had the resources and manpower, it will be easy for them to roll out quality tyres from Falcon, giving employment opportunity and at the same time be profitable.

Umesh Shenoy said that JK Tyres purchased BK Birla flagship firm Kesoram Industries’ tyre manufacturing plant at Haridwar in Uttarakhand for Rs. 2,200 crore and took over Mysuru-based Vikrant Tyres investing Rs. 1,500 crore. The company has a profitable business of Rs. 3,000 crore per year, producing 8,000 tonne of tyres in Mysuru, he added.