In 1872, the twenty-four year old engineer Giovanni Battista Pirelli founded
Pirelli & C. in Milan, establishing the first factory for the manufacture of
rubber goods. By the end of the century he had begun to diversify into the
production of insulated wires for telegraphy (1879) and undersea telegraph
cables (1886), and had launched the first pneumatic bicycle tyre (1890).
Pirelli’s first pneumatic car tyre appeared in 1901, in 1905 the first
motorsport victory, with the Itala at the Pecking-Paris raid. The firm also
began to expand geographically with the opening of cable factories in Spain
(1902), Great Britain (1914) and Argentina (1917).
The interwar years saw Pirelli making fundamental technological conquests
with the patenting of the first fluid oil cable in 1927, and continuing with
its international expansion as it began manufacturing cable in Brazil, tyres
in Great Britain and general goods in Spain (1917) and Argentina (1919). On
the automotive front, the company launched the Stella Bianca sports tyre and
from the 1920s onwards, drivers of the calibre of Nuvolari, Ascari and later
Fangio recorded a magnificent series of sporting triumphs using Pirelli
tyres. The company’s products have, in fact, carried cars and drivers to no
fewer than 19 World Rally Championships and a host of track victories.
In the meantime, in the Fifties, the company introduced the Cinturato
radial–technology that was to shape the history of the tyre. Geographical
expansion also continued with new factories being opened to produce cables
in Canada (1953), rubber goods in France (1957) and tyres in Greece and
Turkey (1960).
In the mid-Seventies, Pirelli invented the lowprofile tyre it named the P7,
the most significant technological innovation
since the Cinturato. The period also witnessed a veritable revolution in the
cable sector with the birth of fibre optics. In 1982, in fact, Pirelli
inaugurated the first Italian fibre optics production facility at
Battipaglia, with numerous foreign subsidiaries immediately following suit.
The Eighties saw the programme of acquisitions continue apace, with Pirelli
taking over the German motorcycle tyre manufacturer, Metzeler, the cable
firm Filergie and the land telecommunications cable business Standard
Telephone Cable. Following the demanding restructuring programme of 1992–93
that involved the sale of the Diversified Products Sector’s non-strategic
businesses, the group embarked on and international relaunch with new
technologies, new products and, above all, a focus on new, emerging markets
such as the Far East and Africa.
In the tyre sector, the group focussed on the introduction and worldwide
distribution in 1994 of the Pirelli P Zero range of ultra-low profile tyres
destined for the most prestigious flagship models.
In recent years, Pirelli Cables and Systems have reinforced its leading
position in the power sector with the acquisition of Siemens businesses in
nine countries (1998), Metal Manufacturers Ltd in Australia and Draka
Holding in Holland and Finland (1999) as well as BICCGeneral in Europe, Asia
and Africa (2000).
2000 is the year of the sale of the Terrestrial Optical Systems business to
Cisco Systems and the sale of the Optical Components business to Corning for
an income of more than Euros 5 billion for revenues from these businesses
that had represented 3.3% of the total for the entire Group: an
unprecedented value creation.
In 2001 Pirelli re-invested the liquidity derived from this operation to
enter trough Olimpia S.p.A. - the vehicle company established with the
Benetton Group, BancaIntesa and Unicredito – for a wideranging industrial
project in the Telecom Italia Group, one of the largest and most profitable
utility companies in Europe. It is in that way that an asset swap was
achieved, with the evident strategic reinforcement of the Group.
The new millennium saw another revolution in the tyre sector: the
introduction in 2000 of the MIRSTM production process for the automated
manufacture of high performance tyres. While Pirelli MIRSTM mini-factories
were being opened in Germany, Great Britain and the United States, the pilot
plant at Milano Bicocca saw the introduction in 2002 of the futuristic
automated CCM – Continuous Compound Mixing – facility.
The same period also saw the creation of Pirelli Labs in Milan, the group’s
avant-garde research centre actively developing new technologies in the
fields of photonics, fibre optics and materials science.
From 2002, Pirelli also began to expand in the real estate market: within a
few months the management company Pirelli & C. Real Estate had established
itself as the most important player on the Italian real estate market.
The rationalization of the group’s structure was completed in 2003 with the
fusion of Pirelli S.p.A. and Pirelli & C. Luxembourg S.p.A. to from Pirelli
& C. S.p.A.
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