Turkey becomes main base of Pirelli’s industrial tires unit

“With the relocation of our EMEA operations from Milan to Istanbul, the region’s annual production operations, at around 2 million industrial tires produced by more than 3,000 employees, will be managed from Istanbul,” Akyıldız said. 

Pirelli’s car tire operations will continue to be run from Milan.

“Turkey already takes the lion’s share in the company’s industrial tire sales, but the relocation of the main base to Istanbul will enable us to take strategic decisions from here, also creating significant career opportunities for Pirelli’s Turkish employees,” said Akyıldız.  

The Pirelli Tires Factory, which is based in Turkey’s industrial northwestern province of Kocaeli, already has the Pirelli Group’s largest production facility in terms of both tonnage and output variety, he noted, adding that the factory has the annual production capacity of 7 million units of 675 different kinds of tires, including tires for Formula 1. 

“Turkey already had a significant role in Pirelli’s industrial tire production. From now on, we will work to boost this role further,” Akyıldız added. 


New investments planned

He also noted that it would now be necessary for the unit to make new investments to further boost capacity. 

“For these planned investments, we are considering Turkey, Egypt and Romania. We have production plants with considerable capacity volumes. We are working on this plan,” Akyıldız added. 

The majority stake of Italy’s Pirelli was sold to state-owned China National Chemical Corp (ChemChina) last year. 

Akyıldız said the company’s “international stance” strengthened following that deal.