Mumbai, April 6: JK Tyres plans to invest Rs 480 crore this year to increase capacities of both its truck and passenger radial tyres, a senior company official said.

"We plan to invest Rs 480 crore to increase our capacity of radial tyres," the company's President Arun Bajoria said.

He said of the Rs 480 crore investment planned for this year, Rs 315 crore would be spent on augmenting its truck radial tyre capacity to 8 lakh tyres from the existing 3.67 lakh tyres and another Rs 120 crore on increasing the off-the-road (OTR) tyre capacity.

The company also plans to invest the remaining in power plant and other projects, he said.

"A part of this enhanced capacity in the OTR sector will be dedicated to Bharat Earth Movers Ltd, which supplies bumpers to Coal India," he said.

"Investment worth about Rs 225 crore has already been pumped in between 2005-07 to ramp up the company's truck radial tyre capacity by 50 per cent," Bajoria said, adding that the company's radial tyres too have been hiked by 30 per cent."

According to Bajoria, truck radialisation was on an upswing in the country and that it would soon touch the 11-12 per cent levels.

The company also has plans to invest another Rs 700 crore for capacity expansions by 2011, he added.