The agencies, hot off the press, in confirming the State's commitment to Ilva alongside the French-Indians of Mittal, they saw mobilizing at the starting line, ready to run for the top management of the company, the usual tour company that moves, from time to time, where seats, positions and salaries are placed in the hands of the politics. A beating drum also took to the track Economy Courier with a leaflet, full page, reserved for Lucia Morselli, the candidate who wants to stay in the saddle in Taranto. A chat "on one's knees" one would have said in the times of Pansa and Bocca. Obvious words, elementary reasoning, good intentions. Nothing would have remained in the memory of the following day if, at the end, Morselli hadn't reserved an imprudent and somewhat improbable reference to Cesare Romiti.
The "Cesare in one piece" would have confided to the young Morselli the art of choosing good managers. “Look at his shoes! (sic)". That's right! The Callieris or the Annibaldis, perhaps even Ernesto Auci himself, would never have suspected that the key to their work with Romiti was determined by Rossetti's moccasins or Church's lace-ups. Nevertheless she will be Mittal's candidate, appreciated by the Government, to pilot the umpteenth rescue attempt of the largest steel company in Europe using the first tranche of four hundred million public euros. No particular successes are remembered about the lady in her long career as an industrial manager. After two years (usually) he has always left the top positions to go elsewhere. Two years insufficient to measure the consolidated results but, on the contrary, sufficient to accrue good millionaire outlays. No one in two years is able to root completed restructuring and reorganization actions giving rise to positive consolidated financial statements.
The two years spent at Terni steelworks they will be remembered as those in which Italy gave the strategic magnetic plate to the Germans of Tyssen, forever impoverishing the Umbrian plant. We found the lady when went out of his way to bring the Indian Jindal to Taranto, allied with Giovanni Arvedi and in the company of Leonardo Del Vecchio. And yet, in the middle of the race, like in the equestrian circus, he knew how to vault from one horse to another transferring its services to the winning consortium of Mittal, becoming its top operational manager. If we wanted to remember something about his almost three years in Taranto it would be difficult not to go further the massive appeals to layoffs and the constant threats of definitive closure of the plant. Today the manager who "looks at the shoes" pilot the marriage with the State in the interest of the shareholder Mittal that, without the umbrella of public money, he would have already thrown down his arms, forced to pay massive compensations and penalties in favor of the commissioner of Ilva dei Riva. The immediate expectation is more prosaic: to manage a good chunk of the billions of the Recovery Fund.
In fact, the so-called Green part of the European project, created to support the electric conversion of the German car and the controlled closure of the obsolete French nuclear power plants, in the part that will be Italy's turn will serve to "reconvert the hot area" of Taranto. Which means closing with steel as the policy of Taranto and Puglia still wants today. Finally, for Mittal, a double deal. You would have a high-quality mechanical-manufacturing appendix in Taranto in the supply chain, but still forced to use your steel from Fos sur Mer.
The agriculture minister Patuanelli he should move with the slow pace of a hillbilly. He could not afford yet another flop, having failed to solve any of the numerous corporate crises that have landed on the Via Veneto ministry in recent years. The weapon that remains to him today is only that of indication of the president and two directors of Ilva, in addition to members of the supervisory board. He has the opportunity to "put on the ribs" of the Indian team three professional personalities, because steel demands profession, experience, professionalism, driving ability. Finance, like subsistence, follows. The first task is to understand how to make steel, to do it well, at a competitive cost and with constant, high-performance quality.
Is the Minister able to avoid the siege of the animators of appointments? Yes, if you put good buzz to do what private individuals (that measure themselves against the market) they do when they choose their collaborators and their managers. They look at the results obtained, at leadership skills, at the professional curriculum, at civil experience which is not the attendance of salons or walking in the corridors of power. Then talk to Giorgio Fossa (let him tell you about the success of a complex structure like the Sea of Milan). You meet Giampietro Benedetti of Danieli in Buttrio, which has exported Italian steel technology all over the world. He goes to Cremona to see Giovanni Arvedi and Mario Caldonazzo. And if you want to finish in glory, take a trip to Antonio Banzato in Padua or to Osoppo with the Pittini brothers. One thing is for sure. He would return to Rome with very clear ideas and, above all, with solutions useful for defending Italian money and steel.
I'm an old steel worker from Brescia. I worked in a steel mill for 24 years and eight months as a metallurgist. I know the trade. Too many speak without knowing the subject. To obtain the metal starting from the ore today there are only two possibilities: with a blast furnace obtaining cast iron and subsequent refining in a converter to obtain steel; with pre-reduction treatment using gas obtaining pre-reduced and subsequent melting in an electric furnace. With the blast furnace you have large yields and lower costs than the pre-reduced. The pre-reducer involves large quantities of slag that can be disposed of with difficulty as well as enormous gas consumption. Today, all over the world, pre-reduced plants produce about 10 million tons of steel out of a total of 1800 million of steel. The production starting from scrap is simply a remelting and refining of pieces of "old railway" which however allows to obtain excellent quantitative and qualitative results.
Attention, some steels cannot be produced only with scrap, they require primary cast iron, i.e. that of the blast furnace. So in conclusion: if we abolish blast furnaces we will have to produce steel with pre-reduced, solve the related problems and pay more for everything that directly or indirectly contains steel, that is, almost everything. Or invent a new system for carburizing the iron oxide of the mineral to obtain cast iron and therefore steel.
It seems to me that Arvedi has a triple turnover with half the staff and with the technology of electric furnaces, which allows the use of scrap, therefore without the problem of the dust park that pollutes Taranto.