Michelin

The brothers Édouard and André Michelin took over the Barbier-Daubrée rubber business at Clermont-Ferrand and reincorporated it as Michelin on 28 May 1889. The company's defining product was the steel-belted radial tyre, developed and patented in 1946 and first marketed as the 'X'. In 1989-90 Michelin bought the B. F. Goodrich Company and Uniroyal from Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, and it also owns the Kléber brand. The Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin is a public company quoted on Euronext Paris in the CAC 40, led in 2026 by Florent Menegaux as managing general partner.

The British company, Michelin Tyre Company Limited, was incorporated in London on 11 May 1905 with André Michelin as chairman and a staff of 17, and took its Fulham Road headquarters in 1911. Having decided in 1926 to build an English factory, from a shortlist of eleven towns it chose Stoke-on-Trent, where the Campbell Road works opened in 1927 as Michelin's first British factory. Further plants followed at Burnley (1960), Belfast (1963), Ballymena (1969), Dundee (1972) and Aberdeen (1973). A retreading facility was added at Stoke in 1968.

Michelin's Land Rover tyres were radials from the first. A leaflet of about 1958 for the 'Michelin 7.50-16 X Y and X S tyres' — 'available from The Rover Co. Ltd for use with the Land-Rover', fitted ex works to the Series II as optional extra equipment at customer request, the X Y 'for mainly on- and off-the-road use' and the X S 'for maximum traction and flotation on soft, wet and slippery surfaces or in sand' — gave Rover's recommended pressures for the regular and long Series II, insisted that the Long Series II 5.50F-16 wheels be used on the Regular Series II, that X tyres be fitted on all wheels with Michelin 'Airstop' butyl tubes and never mixed with conventional tyres, and referred enquiries to the Michelin Tyre Co. Ltd Technical Department at Stoke-on-Trent or 81 Fulham Road, London SW3. Later the 7.50R16 Michelin 4x4 O/R XZL, with a double polyester carcass, metal breaker plies on the crown and a triple protective rib on the sidewall, was 'selected by emergency services for extreme conditions and several armed forces worldwide'; when the Land Rover Wolf was developed for the Ministry of Defence in the 1990s the Michelin tyres were judged better but dearer than the Goodyear G90 designed for the project, and were classed as the approved second choice, fitted to the winterised and waterproofed Wolfs.

British manufacturing contracted from the 1980s: Belfast closed in 1984, Aberdeen in 1986, Stoke-on-Trent stopped making new tyres in 2001 and Burnley built its last tyre in March 2002, leaving Ballymena and Dundee, which had made 20 million tyres by 1980. The Campbell Road site remains Michelin's registered office and commercial headquarters in the United Kingdom and a retreading plant for Michelin Remix and Encore truck tyres, employing about 180 people on three shifts and having turned out some ten million retreads since 1968.