The month of May can mark the future of the structures of the Italian steel industry which, although downsized compared to the 80s, remains a protagonist on international markets for quality and production differentiation and a non-secondary component of the country's production base.
The first stage will be the assignment of the Taranto plant. The two opposing offers weigh the same coin both in the economic offer and in the technological and environmental investments. However, this will not be the decisive path of evaluation by the Commissioners but that of a decision of more careful and strategic evaluations in the choice. On the one hand, Mittal-Arcelor in alliance with the Marcegaglia family weighs its primacy in the world and its more than twenty-year presence throughout Europe. The Taranto plant would add to the chessboard that the Indian entrepreneur has designed and manned from the Northern Seas to the Mediterranean, from the Pyrenees to the Urals. As a consortium, the Marcegaglias (who have never produced steel) bring a great capacity for consumption and transformation as well as good and cultivated political and trade union relations. But with their share of around 20% of the capital they will certainly not be able to influence the industrial strategy of the strong ally. In this context, Taranto would find many opportunities but would suffer consequent production and employment contractions in the face of negative market situations because it was considered "one" of the many production sites of the Anglo-Indian empire.
On the other hand, Jndal Steel (large but smaller than compatriot Mittal) is in a more structured company than the competition. In fact, the capital shares subscribed by Arvedi, Del Vecchio and the majority by CDP determine a sort of decisive "governance" over the next four years. Italianity for Italianness this too weighs. Then there is a considerable strategic weight that plays on the balance. Jndal and his cohorts have no other iron and steel sites in Europe and the Mediterranean: this is why Taranto becomes the central player in their production and market strategy.
The two options will have a significant impact on the assignment and on the consequent activity of relaunching Italian steel which must win over, for example, the customer FCA again and the million cars it produces in Italy.
In Piombino, after the Lucchini-Mordashov disaster, Algerian Issad Rebrab has also raised his hands. Minister Carlo Calenda has openly accused Aferpi of not respecting the contract for the sale of Tuscan assets and that the defaults could bring Piombino's fate back into the hands of the liquidator. The people of Piombino and the national leaders of the Union know that the hopes of a relaunch of the site are very small and almost non-existent. Workers have been guarding the plant for weeks and occupying the city's Town Hall in pursuit of alternative solutions to the Algerians and less random than those experimented with in recent years. The name of a "Brescia" consortium limited to the long train, the wire rod and the rails comes forward again accompanied by a future installation of an electric furnace. A "mini steel" solution that would drastically reduce employment and free up many hundreds of thousands of square meters of land on the outskirts of the city and along the seafront. There are those who look to the president of Federacciai Antonio Gozzi of Duferco and his ally Giuseppe Pasini of Feralpi. Together they have recently carried out numerous acquisition operations both with Caleotto of Lecco and in the dismemberment of the Brescian Stefana Group. We will see.
