Crain News Service report
LADOUX, France (Oct. 15, 2015) — Group Michelin has completed the first phase of a 6-year, $350 million upgrade of its Ladoux technology complex in south central France, with the full project due for completion by early 2018.
Michelin initiated the project in January 2011 and expanded its scope two years later as part of a 6-year, $1 billion investment package to streamline production in France.
Codenamed “Urbalad,” the project encompasses several aspects, including the construction of a 721,000-sq.-ft. structure that will put a number of diverse R&D activities now located in separate buildings under one roof.
The center, called Campus RDI — for Research, Development & Industrialization — is designed to help foster new methods of interdisciplinary and transverse work the company said it feels will be necessary to develop tires needed in the coming decades and will stimulate the fertilization of multidisciplinary ideas.
The unit will house 80 platforms with an area of more than 3,200 square feet each, designed to accommodate cross-functional and multi-disciplinary research.
It will house 1,600 workers, Michelin said.
More than two-thirds of Michelin tires are developed at the Ladoux Technology Centre, located a few miles north of Clermont-Ferrand, France, where Michelin has its headquarters.
The 1,100-acre facility consists of 79 buildings, 19 test tracks layouts totaling 25 miles in length, and has 3,300 employees.
The site was set up in 1965, and the upgrading project started in December 2013.
The center studies material design, tire design and simulation work, while also producing prototype compound rubber and tires.
Michelin posted a video on YouTube showing the concept and the building in progress over the past couple of years.
This report appeared on the website of European Rubber Journal, a United Kingdom-based sister publication of Tire Business.
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