The scarcity of investments due to lack of capital is often associated with a bureaucratic framework unfavorable to the creation of business on the Italian territory. There are also other factors that exert a strong deterrent power on investments: administrations' poor ability to interface with stakeholders, environmental associations that are sometimes hostile a priori, inefficiency of the judicial system.
Ecodeco, a company of the A2A group that has just inaugurated a new plant for the mechanical-biological treatment of municipal solid waste in Cervera del Maestre (Spain), knows something about it.
The structure uses the Biocube system patented by Ecodeco itself and will house the residual part of the separate waste collection of 49 municipalities in the north of the province of Castellòn, for a treatment capacity of 130.000 tons per year.
The plant was built by a consortium made up of Teconma, Azahar and Ecodeco itself, which in addition to supplying the technology also provided for the construction of the electromechanical part of the complex.
The waste supply chain will also see the same consortium involved after the treatment of the materials, in the processes of compaction and transport to the landfill, also designed by the A2A group company. A model that has aroused quite a few controversies in Italy, especially in the South, due to the lack of transparency of market processes, as in the case of the Mazzarrà Sant'Andrea landfill, where the waste "collectors" are members of the landfill that manages them.
The total value of the investment is approximately 40 million euros. Ecodeco, which has a 30% stake in the construction of the plant, will receive royalties for 20 years in addition to the consideration.
While companies that are able to invest flee abroad, in Italy there is now more and more talk of the "Nimby" syndrome, from the English acronym "not in my back yard". We are referring to the increasingly common tendency to hinder investments in industrial structures. Suffice it to say that in the Veneto alone as many as 40 infrastructure projects in the energy and transport sectors are under accusation and risk taking other paths. The burning case of the Brindisi regasification terminal is still very recent: British Petroleum has – after 10 years of exhausting negotiations – withdrawn investments for eight hundred million euros and about a thousand jobs.
