Pirelli Announces Further Investment in Romania

Pirelli’s sees its new industrial centre in Romania’s automotive sector as strategic for the company’s future growth in the emerging East European markets. The company’s position in Romania is now set to grow further in coming years following the announcement of new investments to the value of 250 million euros. The chairman of Pirelli & C. SpA, Marco Tronchetti Provera, made the announcement to Romanian Prime Minister, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, during a meeting held in Bucharest on September 29, at which the Group’s activities in the country were discussed.

The company is one of the main Italian and international investors in Romania. In the last five years, the Pirelli Group has invested approximately 250 million euros in Romania to create a large industrial facility comprised of a car tyre factory, which at the end of 2009 will have annual manufacturing capacity of about five million units, and a factory for production of steelcord in the Slatina area. The facility will be completed by the end of 2008, at which time the production of particulate filters for new automobiles in a factory in Bumbesti will begin.

The additional investments, planned from now to the end of 2011, are being implemented with the aim of increasing the plants’ manufacturing capacity, thereby significantly improving the overall competitiveness of the Group’s European industrial structure. The new project will receive a contribution from the Romanian government, up to a maximum of approximately 28 million euros.

The Slatina facility, says Pirelli, is located in a strategic position with respect to the Western and Eastern European markets, and represents a logistics and commercial hub for the Pirelli Group for the whole of Eastern Europe, an area that is fairing better than others in the difficult economic climate that has hit the automotive sector.

During the September 29 meeting, Tronchetti Provera also communicated to Prime Minister Tariceanu the personnel training and development programmes initiated by Pirelli in its Romanian factories. In the 2006-2008 three-year period, Slatina workers were each given an average of about 150 days of professional training, a total investment of more than 500,000 euros. After the start of production at the filter factory in Bumbesti, the Group’s total number of employees in Romania will rise to more than 3,000 at normal working capacity.

The meeting between Tronchetti Provera and Tariceanu also covered the numerous social and cultural activities started by the Pirelli Group in Romania, from the partnership with the University of Craiova on technological innovation to the project for Italian culture in Slatina, and from support for collaboration between Milan’s Niguarda hospital and the Slatina hospital to the establishment of the Inter Campus initiative.