Italian President honours Pirelli on 140th anniversary

The President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano met with Pirelli chairman and CEO Marco Tronchetti and other top management to mark the 140th anniversary of the company’s foundation in 1872.

“It was a great honour for me and for all of us to be received by President Napolitano on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the birth of Pirelli,” said Tronchetti Provera. “It is an anniversary that we are celebrating with the 36,000 people, throughout the world, who share in the pride of belonging to a group that has taken the excellence of Italian industry everywhere in the world.

this success story that began on 28 January 1872 with the founding of elastic rubber producer ‘G.B. Pirelli & C.’ in Milan. And in 1879, G.B. Pirelli & C. began producing cables and conductors for the transmission of electrical energy and communication. In 1890 the company expanded and it acquired land in Milan for a new factory to make tyres for velocipedes, a product that would in time replace solid rubber rings. The rest is history

Pirelli is currently the fifth largest tyre maker in the world in terms of sales; last year the company produced 66 million tyres and generated sales totalling 5.65 billion euros.

The company is commercially present in more than 160 countries and operates 22 production facilities in 13 lands – Italy, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Romania, China, Egypt, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, the USA and the UK.