Known for its style, speed and performance marketing values, Pirelli & C. S.p.A. is a multinational company based in Milan, Italy, listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since 1922, with a temporary privatization period by the consortium led by the Chinese state-owned enterprise ChemChina.
Pirelli has announced that its tyres will be fitted as OE on the new Peugeot 407 Coupé, at an international press conference in Granada, Spain. The new 407 will be exclusively equipped with 18 inch P Zero Nero UHP tyres.
Dutch wholesaler, Van den Ban, has announced that it will add a new exclusive brand to its tyre portfolio. The new brand, Clear, is already available in a number of sizes. Van den Ban says it intends to introduce further sizes in the coming months ultimately leading to 30-size strong high performance portfolio. A further range expansion is planned for next year.
Pirelli has supplied tyres for the Brabus E V12 Biturbo, a world speed record-holding tuned Mercedes on show at the Frankfurt International Motor Show, along with the main new models from Bentley, Cadillac, Lamborghini, Maserati, Peugeot, Audi, Volvo, Alfa Romeo and AMG. The Milan-based firm is also equipping the most sophisticated tuned versions of models from Ferrari, Mercedes, Range Rover and Jaguar prepared by the German specialists Novitec, Brabus and Arden.
Pirelli has announced that it will provide original equipment for the new Audi RS4 range. The Italian tyre manufacturer made the announcement at the Pirelli proving ground in Vizzola Ticino – exclusively fitting the vehicle with the company’s ultra high performance P Zero Rosso and P Zero Corsa Asimmetrico tyres.
Director of BRMA, John Dorken, successfully completed the trek he undertook in the High Andes to raise funds for the Medical Aid and Relief Charity for the Children of Chechnya. He raised £6000 and received some generous contributions from a number of companies including Michelin, Continental, Bridgestone and Pirelli.
Pirelli is to fit its UHP tyres to two Ferrari 612 Scaglietti’s which will tour China starting from Shanghai on 29 August.
The manufacturer has agreed to support Ferrari due to the ever-increasing importance of the Chinese market to the company. A joint venture agreement was recently signed for the production of tyres in the province of Shandong, one of the areas of the tour.
Around £750,000 worth of rubber, destined for Pirelli’s tyre factory in Carlisle, has been destroyed in a fire. The blaze, which began yesterday and is expected to continue all day, occurred in a 100 metre square building at the former RAF 14 MU site between Rockcliffe and Cargo.
Firefighters are now using a pioneering foam to try to stop the day-old blaze that ruined 550 tonnes of rubber – enough to make 50,000 tyres.
Pirelli claims that production should be relatively unaffected, as a delivery lorry had picked up some stock from the warehouse on the day before the fire.
Pirelli has won the contract to supply tyres to the German Federal Ministry of Defence armoured vehicles and trucks. Pirelli will specifically be providing the PS22 Pista tyres, sized 14.00R20 for armoured vehicles and FR25 12.00R20 for trucks.
Pirelli competed against other well-known companies before being selected for the tender. According to the company the tyres were selected due to their good traction in all conditions and for being able to keep going for up to 100 km after a puncture or blow out thanks to a run-flat device fitted inside of the tyre. As far as the truck tyres are concerned, determining factors are said to be the high mileage as well as the strong wet handling.
Dexel Tyres is something of a rarity in today’s tyre business – a family-owned business that has been trading for over 40 years and which is still expanding.
The business was founded in 1961 by Harry France and, over the next 25 years, was steadily expanded by his son, Peter. It was Peter who purchased the premises in Staniforth Road, Sheffield in the 1960s that today are the group’s head office. Nowadays the business is under the control of Peter’s son Paul as managing director, assisted by his sister Julie as group credit controller.
The policy of expansion has continued and the company has doubled in size over the past decade, today claiming to be one of the UK’s largest independent tyre companies, with an annual turnover of more than £13 million and sales of over 100,000 tyres a year.
The pattern of expansion has been steady, rather than dramatic, and concentrated on the East Midlands area of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, opening depots in Worksop, Gainsborough, Horncastle, Market Rasen and two in the city of Lincoln.
Pirelli PS22 tyres swept the board in the Baja Aragon, round of the FIA Rally-Raid World Cup, at the end of July with two Iveco Eurocargo 140E24 WS trucks of Team Motorsport Italia crewed by local drivers Selga-Torra and Roque-Asurmendi-Diamante, taking first and second places respectively in the truck category of the event, preceding the third placed Mercedes-Benz 1844 AK on Pirelli, driven by Spain’s Oliveras-Campa/Capsada. The news comes six months after Markku Alen’s seventh place in the 2005 Paris-Dakar driving a Pirelli PS22-shod Iveco Eurocargo and Miki Biasion’s great performance in a similar vehicle on Pirelli until a simple technical problem stopped him from finishing the race, and the second place in Turkey’s Rally of the Orient, last June.
The joint venture between Pirelli and Roadone Tyre Co Ltd, which was previously announced in June has been completed following approval from the relevant authorities. The joint venture, which is majority owned by Pirelli with approximately 60 per cent of the share capital, aims to produce radial truck tyres in the Shandong Province. The new company will serve the Chinese market and others in South East Asia. Pirelli says that the company expects to make an initial investment of approximately 60 million euros.
According to the company, this latest development confirms the strategy of expansion in the Chinese market, where it plans to invest approximately 150 million euros over the next three years, as announced in November 2004. The Chinese market is the world’s fastest growing for road transportation with a total production in 2004 of more than 100 million sets of radial tyres, representing approximately 50 per cent of the overall tyre output in China, with a 33 per cent increase over the previous year.
Pirelli and Continental opened their 80:20 joint venture Slatina steel cord production plant, Cord Romania on Friday.
The factory is located on a 100,000 square metre area will have an annual output of 30,000 tons of steel cord and employs 350 people. The steel cord is destined for tyre production in East European markets.
The new facility will require an investment of 40 million euros over several years to meet growing demand which is already almost two times supply says Continental.
This investment is the first ever made by Pirelli Tyres in the Balkan region and is part of the company’s expansion strategy in Romania. The manufacturer also plans to open a new high performance car tyre plant in Slatina in 2006.
Pirelli S.p.A. says it has no plans to build a new tyre plant in India, denying the news item in earlier reports that it may be looking at that possibility. Pirelli’s published statement was to the point: “The Pirelli Group has no plans to build a new factory in India for tyre production.”
Peugeot boss, Jean-Pierre Nicolas has predicted that they will have a ‘real chance’ to win in Argentina next weekend – and has announced that the team will introduce a new tyre at the Rally Finland in August.
The European Commission has approved Goldman Sachs’ acquisition of Pirelli’s engery and telecomms cable businesses. The commission found that no company controlled by Goldman Sachs is engaged in the EU in the same markets as those in which the acquired businesses are active, and therefore will not impede competition. In addition the commission observed that the acquired businesses face strong competition from companies such as Corning and DrakaComteq.
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