Pirelli restructures industrial tire business

LONDON—Pirelli has merged its Europe and Middle East and Africa industrial tire businesses to form an EMEA unit based in Istanbul, the company has confirmed.

To form the EMEA region, Pirelli explained, “the European region of Pirelli Industrial Tires, managed from Milan, Italy, was combined with its MEA Region which comprised the Middle East including Turkey and the African countries.”

“Istanbul became the base of the new EMEA region and Murat Akyıldız became the CEO of Pirelli Industrial EMEA Region,” a Pirelli representative added in a written statement—confirming Turkish media reports about this development.

The EMEA operation will encompass 128 countries from Istanbul, and total production will be around 2 million industrial tires, Akyıldız told the Turkish press.

Pirelli's factory based in Turkey's industrial north western province of Kocaeli has an annual production capacity of 7 million units of 675 different kinds of tires.

The restructuring comes in the wake of a recent takeover of Pirelli by the Chinese state-owned ChemChina in June.

As part of the takeover, ChemChina and Pirelli agreed to merge industrial tire production units at Pirelli and Aeolus and double capacity in the business unit.