The rubber-tyred metro systems of Paris, Tokyo and Mexico City have one thing in common: they run on tyres made in Piedmont. Michelin’s Alessandria plant is the only site in the Group that manufactures them, although its main activity is truck tyres. The Piedmont site celebrated 55 years in operation on 16 September 2026 with a ceremony opened by Agostino Mazzocchi, president and chief executive of Michelin Italiana, before handing over to the plant director, Francesco Pepe. The anniversary is part of initiatives marking Michelin’s 120 years in Italy, where the Group has invested more than €430 million over the past five years.
The Alessandria plant employs 950 people across a site covering around 470,000 square metres and has production capacity of 1.2 million tyres a year. Alongside its truck tyre range and tyres for metro systems, the production lines also manufacture large tyres for earthmoving, civil engineering and agricultural machinery. Some 60% of production stays in Italy and Europe, while the remaining 40% goes to markets worldwide. “This is a very significant figure in a context where companies are relocating production abroad,” Pepe stressed. The plant serves both the replacement market and original equipment manufacturers, including makers of trucks, semi-trailers, cranes, quarry vehicles and special-purpose vehicles. For road haulage companies, the reference product is the Multilife model, which Mazzocchi described as the heart of Alessandria’s operations: tyres designed to be regrooved and retreaded, extending their useful life. “It is an approach that helps reduce the total cost of ownership for transport companies and, at the same time, limit resource consumption and CO2 emissions,” explained the president of Michelin Italiana.
Alongside its production lines, the plant has a research centre that works in coordination with the Group’s centre, based at its Clermont-Ferrand headquarters, to validate new materials and new tyres before industrialisation. One of the results is Infinicoil technology, which was developed in Alessandria and is now produced at the site. Pepe says it “makes it possible to reduce consumption during use and tyre wear”. The second example cited by the plant director among products developed in Piedmont is a specific size of the Michelin X-Crane 2 tyre, designed for self-propelled mobile cranes. He explained that the market needed a tyre capable of supporting heavy loads in an application where a truck tyre was no longer sufficient and no existing size met that requirement. When the Group decided to enter the segment, it entrusted Alessandria with development, industrialisation and production.
Innovation also extends to processes, including intralogistics. Of all the Group’s sites, Alessandria was chosen as the pilot plant for the introduction of autonomous guided vehicles in an industrial department. Having successfully completed the trial phase, the technology now operates in the preparation department and is ready to be rolled out to other Michelin plants. Pepe emphasised the organisational impact of the innovation: “When we talk about automation, digitalisation and technology, we are not talking about replacing people, but about supporting them and working alongside them”. Operators who previously drove forklift trucks now focus on improving flows, maintaining automated systems and monitoring them through digital applications.
This reskilling is matched by an intensive training programme, with more than 70,000 hours delivered in 2025. The site was also the pilot, among the Group’s 80 industrial plants, for the Employee Experience project. The initiative entrusts mixed working groups drawn from different departments, functions and levels of responsibility with designing solutions to problems reported by employees themselves. Facilities have also been refurbished, with new changing rooms, break areas, amenities, offices and meeting rooms, while a new security gatehouse opened in May.
The third pillar identified by Pepe is flexibility, an area in which the Group regards the site as its global benchmark. The plant director described a market that moves through different phases and can generate sudden demand for particular production volumes or mixes: “In some cases, we are asked to put sizes back into production that we have not made for months, perhaps even for a few years”, he said. The response is based on a very broad portfolio of ranges and sizes, the technical expertise needed to manage it and a series of alternative organisational arrangements. These allow the plant to adapt rapidly to fluctuations in demand.
Alessandria is also making progress on environmental performance. By 31 December 2025, water consumption had been cut by 64% compared with 2019, against an overall Group target of 50% by 2030. “Our area is rich in water, but we do not know whether that will still be the case in the years ahead”, Pepe commented. For energy and CO2, where the 2030 targets use 2010 as the baseline, the decisive step came in July 2026, when the plant shut down the gas turbine at its thermal power station and replaced it with electric heat pumps powered by electricity certified as coming from renewable sources. As a result of this measure, from 1 January 2027 Alessandria will also meet its 2030 target for energy efficiency and emissions, three years ahead of schedule. The installation of photovoltaic systems and the sourcing of biomethane are now under consideration.
M.L.
