Output Will Be Focused On Scorpion Zero Performance SUV
tires

ROME, Georgia, December 20, 2004 Pirelli has
commenced the installation of a fourth production line at its U.S.
Modular Integrated Robotized System (MIRS) factory in Rome,
Georgia. Although flexible to produce both passenger car and SUV
tires, the new line will be dedicated principally to Scorpion Zero,
a testament to Pirelli’s rapidly growing business in performance
SUV tires both in the US and elsewhere.
Full production from the new line is expected in June 2005. In
fact, the 26-inch Scorpion Zero Asimmetrico recently announced at
the SEMA Show will switch from its current European production
location to the new line in Rome from that date.
With its additional capacity, the Rome factory will become the lead
source in the Pirelli Group for performance SUV products,
distinguished by the fact that all of its 4×4 output is of 22
inches in diameter or greater.
Inaugurated at the end of August 2002 and coherent with the
strategic allocation plan of Pirellis global MIRS
project, the Georgia plant currently operates three production
modules and covers a total of 440,000 square feet.

With MIRS, Pirelli has totally revolutionized traditional tire
production technology and methodology. The new process is based on
the mini-factory concept, a unit of high flexibility
to the point of being able to produce a single tire per
size which can be located in an area as dictated by the
needs of the reference market.
In a space of about 4000 square feet, the robots carry out the work
of the whole tire production cycle, at a speed without precedent in
the industry, from compounds to the finished product. They do so
without interruption of semi-manufactured components that have to
be moved and without intermediate warehousing phases. The
MIRS robots can produce one tire every three minutes.
This permits the reduction of the average time of material transit
or lead-time from the traditional processs three/six days to
the MIRS 72 minutes.

It is the absence of the warehousing stages that enables the
total tire production process to be concentrated in an extremely
limited space. That practically reduces to zero the area required
for the enormous quantities of materials and products that normally
remain in circulation during the traditional process. Under the
standard tire building system, only 12 percent of material is being
worked on at any one time, while 88 percent is stored and waiting
to enter the production cycle.
The technology of the MIRS process radically changes the
means by which a tire is made, reducing the production phases from
14 to just three.

The tire is no longer assembled in discontinuous stages, but is
built by the robots directly around a drum, which the machines pass
from mechanical hand to mechanical
hand, without stopping and without human intervention
Extruders progressively apply a strip reinforced with metal cord to
the drums with a movement of circumferential and axial deposition.
The last robot builder sends the drum with the green
tire to the vulcanizer, which is a real
merry-go-round of six molds: They turn on their own
axis with a cadence equal to the time of tire construction, and
also enable the maintenance of the process continuum in this phase.
The vulcanized tire then goes to the finishing department for the
final stage in the proceduremeticulous quality control with
the help of lasers.

New Facility Managed by Pirellis Logistics Partner Kuehne
+ Nagel To Supply Eastern U.S.

Rome, Georgia, Dec. 10, 2004 Complementing recent
investments in its state-of-theart tire factory in Rome, Georgia,
and responding to a rapidly growing customer base in the Eastern
U.S., Pirelli Tire has opened a major new warehousing facility near
Atlanta in association with its newly appointed logistics partner,
Kuehne + Nagel.
Officially announced today by Governor Sonny Perdue, the new
investment confirms Pirellis growing commitment to the
Georgia economy. Destined to house more than $35 million of tire
inventory, the new warehouse is ideally located not only for
Pirellis factory in Rome, but also for the 2000-plus
containers of Pirelli tires that annually arrive from European and
South American factories through the port of Savannah.
We have a solidly growing business in North America,
particularly in the Southeast; so our Georgia location is really
working for us, commented Guy Mannino, president and CEO of
Pirelli Tire North America. This new warehouse is part of
Pirellis new Logistics and Customer Care Action
Plan targeted to enhance our total client service. In
particular, this initiative is geared to improving service to our
customers across the Eastern United States.

Pirelli Tire North America specializes in the manufacture and
marketing of high performance car, light truck and motorcycle tires
and currently has three of its highly advanced MIRS (Modular
Integrated Robotized System) modules in operation in its new
factory in Rome, Georgia, to better serve the American OEM and
Replacement markets.

For more information visit the companys web site at
www.us.pirelli.com
Click here for photo of
announcement

Forbes.com 11/15/04
Sex Sells
By Susan Adams

The Pirelli calendar is unique among corporate marketing tools.
To be sure, women’s bodies in various states of undress are
standard attention-getters for all manner of male-oriented
products, from beer to screwdrivers. But no company or product has
used sexy pictures exactly the way Italian cable- and tiremaker
Pirelli has.

Since 1964, Pirelli’s calendar, a limited-issue freebie, has
succeeded in making cheesecake seem highbrow by employing such
top-flight photographers as Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz and the
late Richard Avedon. Result: a product that passes for art. Now an
$85 book from Rizzoli, The Pirelli Calendar: The Complete Works, 40
Years, salutes what some have called the ” world’s greatest office
status symbol.” (The last Pirelli anthology, The Pirelli
Calendar:1964-2001, The Complete Works, released in 2002 by
Rizzoli, is still in print.)

Pirelli doles out ” the Cal,” as those in the know call it, to a
select group of 40,000 special people, including members of the
British royal family, the king of Spain, Paul Newman and Bill Gates
( news – web sites). Only 1,700 go to the U.S. It’s not for sale,
except on the auction market. According to Pirelli, in 1975 ten
years’ worth fetched 20,000 (equal to $41,000 then, or
$138,000 today) for charity at Christie’s in London. Days after the
company releases each year’s edition, says Pirelli’s global
calendar coordinator, Gioacchino del Balzo, single copies pop up on
Ebay for as much as $600.

What about brand loyalty? Certainly there are legions of
faithful Cal consumers. But does gazing at a topless Heidi Klum
holding a strawberry ice cream cone that is dripping onto her
voluptuous breast (January 2003, shot by Bruce Weber) inspire
anyone to run out and buy Pirelli P-Zero radials? Wags have
suggested Pirelli might be better off selling its calendars and
giving its tires away.

Pirelli can’t quantify the marketing value any more than
Goodyear can count the revenue gain from its blimp. Pirelli can,
however, add up the editorial pages and television time occasioned
by the Cal, and those are huge. Del Balzo says that for every $1
million Pirelli spends producing the calendar, it gets $60 million
worth of media coverage. He declines to reveal the calendar’s
production budget.

So who came up with this brilliant idea? Pirelli’s plucky
British subsidiary. In fact, it was in 1963, not 1964, that the
first Pirelli calendar was produced. But that effort was decidedly
down-market (e.g., no-name models), and it was never distributed to
customers. The 1964 calendar, shot by British fashion photographer
Robert Freeman in Majorca, was more tasteful. The raciest shot (the
month was May, for any scholars wishing to research this) showed a
model with an unbuttoned denim shirt.

Pirelli likes to say that the Cal reflects society’s tastes.
1965 is a tad bolder than 1964; one photo shows a bra peaking out
from under a shirt and shorts that are partially unzipped. 1966 is
a step more risqu, with a provocative rear view (May,
again) featuring see-through panties. 1968 bares the first
nipple–but subtly, not the way Janet Jackson would do it. By 1970
the calendar hits its stride, with unabashedly sensual photos shot
by Italian magazine and advertising photographer Francis Giacobetti
in Paradise Island, Bahamas. See-through cover-ups and barely-there
crocheted bikinis over wet, glistening bodies. Un-cheesy
cheesecake.

The Cal stopped publishing from 1975 through 1983, as Pirelli
struggled with the gas crisis and union problems. But it roared
back in 1984 with German-born photographer Uwe Ommer. All of the
models are naked and each photo displays the Pirelli tire track
pattern, sometimes emblazoned directly onto the models’ bodies.
February features three perfectly formed bare bottoms on a Bahamas
beach, inked with tire tracks and backdropped by a deep blue sea
and tropical sky. It’s art. Any First Amendment lawyer could get it
past the Supreme Court.

Likewise the two calendars shot by American fashion photographer
Herb Ritts in 1994 and 1999. Exquisite composition, stunning models
including a young Cindy Crawford, and a classic approach that
showcases beauty and sensuality makes these two years the classiest
of the lot. Except, arguably, the 1995 and 1997 editions, shot by
the late, great Richard Avedon. The 2000 Cal, with photos by
American magazine photographer Annie Leibovitz, is also notable.
Leibovitz shows only two faces in her dozen images; the rest are
torsos, legs, breasts, hands. Though the bodies are fit, they are
natural rather than voluptuous or silicon-implanted, as though
Pirelli were backing away for a moment from too much
upholstery.

Pirelli will launch its 2005 edition at a Nov. 18 party in Rio
de Janeiro, to which several hundred special people, including
models Naomi Campbell and Marija Vujovic, are invited. The
photographer this year is a Frenchman, Patrick Demarchelier, and
the location–yet another beach–is in Brazil. The fte is
guaranteed to garner the customary media attention, further
cementing tires to gorgeous bodies–Pirelli’s art of pneumatic
conflation.

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