In a letter to finance minister Yaswant Sinha, the Federation said Dunlop’s management should be taken over and handed to a team of professional managers. Dealers, who have a major stake in the operations of the company, would like to be directly involved in the day-to day revival process, the letter said. Once things are put in the right place, dealers would be ready to extend financial support to Dunlop in funding its marketing and distribution, the federation convenor SP Singh said in a letter copies of which were sent to West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu and Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunandhi.

According the Dealers federations the history of tyre in India is synonymous with the entry of Messers Dunlop India Ltd. in the country. During the fifties , Dunlop’s Sahaganj Plant(West Bengal) was not only manufacturing wide range of automotive tyre and tubes for its own marketing but also was doing good job work for other multinationals such as Goodyear India ,Messrs Freestone Tyre and Dunlop India Limit’s own subsidiary Messrs India super Tyres Ltd. This was the supreme position enjoyed by Dunlop in domestic market. Later , Dunlop has set up another plant with 1.5 million tyres capacity in Ambettur ,Tamilndu. Even when in 1994-95 the things have started down hill, the overall market share of Dunlop was 10.6 percent.

The closure of Dunlop’s Sahagunj and Ambettur units has been a major setback to 1500 Dunlop dealers all over the country. Huge backlog of warranty claims are struck up with the dealers from customers i.e. commercial vechile owners. Consequently, the vechiles owners have withheld repayments of outstanding dues to them on account of credit sales. Simultaneously ,large number of dealers have to get back their security deposit held up with Dunlop. The three generation Dunlop India dealers have been left high and dry by the management and all the efforts to get right status on these matters have been stone walled.

They said while financial institutions, BIFR employees, centre and state government are engaged in tug of war in the name of reviving sick Dunlop , the 1500 tyre dealers seem to be taken for granted or do not fit into their scheme of things. This is a serious matter, they felt.

Of late, with the closure of some big, medium and many small scale tyre units in different parts of the country. The dependence of hapless tyre dealers has been reverted to a few tyres units such as MRF LTD, J K Tyres and Apollo Tyres. The other players like Modi Rubber Ltd., Ceat Ltd. have been shrinking due to various reasons in last two years, while Goodyear India and Birla Tyres have been trying to recover their shares in the market as smaller players. Even Messers Brigestone A.C.C. Ltd. Japan has yet to make its presence felt in the important segments like truck and bus tyre, tractor and trolley tyres. Off the road (OTR) , tractor and industrial tyres. Dunlop has major presence for all categories of tyres including animal drawn vehicle(ADV) tyres and high tech. industrial rubber products. The Dunlop has been single largest domestic producer of aeroplane tyres.

The dealers association pointed out that the revival of Dunlop India is most needed to maintain a healthy and competitive tyre market has shrunk from 13 major tyre producers to mere 7 at present. No doubt, that Dunlop India has range, production capacity and technological backup to recapture its prime position of early seventies in the market.

The tyres dealers request centre and concerned state government to come up with an effective rehabilitation plan in a time bound manner on its own rather than depending on the current management. The existing management headed by Manohar Rajaram Chabaria seems to be more keen in shuffling its top management and has an eye on generating money through its disposal of socalled nonperforming assets. They said that in light of past experience the management cannot be trusted to handle and such sensitive matters which involved funds. On the contrary their acts of omission and commission of more than a decade needed to be fully exposed.

Giving their suggestions they said that the tyre dealers would be (a) ready provide total marketing and sales support to restructure the working of Dunlop India to suit the new marketing strategies. Thus the Dunlop’s management should be taken over and handed over to a team of professional managers. The dealers who have major stake in the operations of the company ,would like to be directly involved in day to day revival process.(b) Once the things are put to right place the dealers are ready to extend financial support to Dunlop in funding its marketing and distribution operations.(c) new management should take immediate steps in inducting world class Radial Tyre technology to match the demanding consumer needs of high quality tyres.