Background: Marking a 40-year success story for Michelin

Michelin’s site in Dundee is the UK’s only tyre factory and this year celebrates 40 years in the city.

The plant at Baldovie was opened in 1972 and, at its peak, made more than seven million tyres a year for export around the world.

Dundee’s biggest’s industrial employer, it once employed more than 1,000 people, but the numbers now sit at just over 800.

In 2006, it became the first Michelin factory in the world to embrace wind energy, with two wind turbine generators helping to reduce its environmental impact and energy bills by around a third.

Among its ex-employees is George Galloway, the former Glasgow Labour MP and Celebrity Big Brother contestant, who is now Respect MP for Bradford West.

Late last year, Michelin announced a £50 million plan to upgrade its operations in the UK. At the time, First Minister Alex Salmond said: “In the last three years, the workforce in Dundee has taken the Michelin plant to the top of the ranking in virtually every assessment across the Michelin group.

“To be able to win this great investment in the most difficult of economic circumstances speaks volumes for the quality of the Scottish workforce and the track record speaks for itself.”