King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden visits Pirelli
HIS MAJESTY KING CARL XVI GUSTAF OF SWEDEN VISITS PIRELLI WITH A DELEGATION OF ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING SCIENCES
PIRELLI LABS, THE EXCELLENCE CENTER OF THE GROUP, AND MIRS, THE INNOVATIVE ROBOTIZED SYSTEM FOR TYRES MANUFACTURING, VISITED
Milan, 30 January 2003 - During the Royal Technology Mission to Italy, His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden visited today in Milan the Pirelli Group with a delegation of Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences composed by main Swedish representatives of industries and research and development centers.
His Majesty was welcomed by Marco Tronchetti Provera, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pirelli SpA; he then visited Pirelli Labs, the technological excellence center of the Group, and MIRS-CCM (Modular Integrated Robotized System - Continuous Compound Mixing) plant, the innovative robotized system for tyres manufacturing. During his visit, King Carl XVI Gustaf was accompanied by Giovanni Ferrario, Managing Director of Pirelli SpA, and by Giorgio Grasso, Enrico Albizzati, Renato Caretta and Piero Misani, who showed him the most technologically advanced R&D projects of Pirelli.
During the first part of the visit, the activities of Pirelli Labs were showed to His Majesty. Born in May 2001, the Labs span on 13,000 sqm in the Milan-Bicocca area and represent one of the most advanced R&D centers in the world, specialized - in particular - in photonics and in new materials for energy generation and distribution, as well as for tyres production. The scope of the laboratories and of the partnerships that were recently established with the Russian Academy of Sciences and with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology makes Pirelli Labs a unique center of high-tech studies that firmly intends to maintain its high level of innovation capacities. Labs are divided in two sections: Optical Innovation and Materials Innovation. On the optics front, the efforts of the new laboratories will be concentrated on photonics and the development of new optical components based on nano-technologies; in the energy field, studies are focused on fuel and photovoltaic cells for "clean power" generation, as well as on new materials and technologies for tyres manufacturing.
The delegation then visited the MIRS-CCM plant that, originally deployed in July 2000 as a pilot project on the Milan-Bicocca site, in a time span of just three years has become a fully operational industrial system in markets such as Germany, UK, Italy and the USA. MIRS is a technological breakthrough by which Pirelli introduced a big change in tyre production; quality, performance and safety have improved tremendously.
More recently, in June last year, Pirelli completed the MIRS project by adding CCM, the Continuous Compound Mixing system, to further improve the quality and reliability of tyres. CCM ensures the quantitative control of materials to a degree of precision that is unprecedented in the tyre industry. The flexibility of MIRS and CCM allows the tyre producer and the car manufacturer to work in a more integrated way and consequently react better and timelier to the competitive scenario.
After the visit and the luncheon at the "Bicocca degli Arcimboldi" castle, the exchange of gifts ceremony took place. Marco Tronchetti Provera presented His Majesty King Carl with the first wristwatch of the PZero Tempo collection, designed by Bulgari. The watch, produced in a very limited series, will be commercialized starting February 2003 and the model presented to His Majesty was engraved with number 001.
His Majesty King Carl presented Marco Tronchetti Provera with a plate, commemorating the visit, whose base is a crystal composition.
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