Pirelli brings Romanian plant on stream

Slatina, Romania -- Pirelli has brought its dedicated high performance car tyre factory on stream in Slatina, Romania. The plant will, by 2008 make around 4.5 million tyres per year, of which 90 percent are destined for export.

In 2006 the company expects to make 175 000 units, rising to 2 million in 2007 and 4.5 million in 2008. Thje company has land and infrastructure capacity to build a second plant, bringing theoretical capacity to 9 million units per year at some later stage.

Employment is currently around 200 people, destined to rise to 450 by the end of the year, to 800 in 2007 and to the maximum of 1000 in 2008.

The tyres are all high and ultra-high performance, up to speed rating Y (300 kph), but the factory cannot be used for OE orders until the company has one year's worth of quality and manufacturing data, said Maurizio Boiocchi, head of innovation at the company.

The factory makes use of newly-developed tyre building machines made by Pirelli's in-house machinery unit, CMP. These machines dubbed TRP-20 plus can make all tyres, including run-flats, in rim sizes from 13-inch to 24 inch on a cycle time of around 2 minutes, giving capacity of 420 tyres per day per machine, for the most complex constructions.

Change-over time for these units is short, and the system is designed to run at up to two size changes per day, if necessary.

Curing presses are supplied by the Indian firm, Larsen & Toubro, while the factory currently has all raw materials shipped in. Francesco Gori said the company is currently building the mixing room, where four intermeshing mixing lines will be installed before the summer of 2007.