Philip Morris will create the biggest one research center in industrialization and sustainability in Bologna. The announcement was made by the President and CEO of Philip Morris Italia, Marco Hannappel, during the ANSA digital event "The factory of the future". “We will open a center of services for innovation and research and development in Bologna which will bring together a series of skills and people for a total of 250 jobs. Some are already present, others who will move from abroad and other new jobs”, said Hannappel who defines it as a “global flagship.
The new investment in Bologna is not the first in Italy for the company. Last November, in fact, the creation of a state-of-the-art center of digital services for CRM consumers was announced with software of very high potential for the future, in Taranto, the Philip Morris Disc digital information service center, which employs over 300 people.
These are initiatives that will require huge investments. In this regard, Hannappel underlined that in the three-year period 2021-2023 $2,4 billion in capital expenditures for machinery and new generation industrialization activities, all on innovative products. Obviously, an important part will be spent in Italy.
An important investment plan that is part of a larger project, which arises from the "global decision of a transformation of the tobacco sector from within, with products, always made of tobacco but, without combustion, foreseeing very strong investments”.
By the way, in this context was born 5 years ago the Crespellano pole, which the CEO of the company describes with “two production sites, 1.600 people, over one billion in investment that integrates into a supply chain that for us was already integrated from an agricultural point of view and in this way has become a new agro-industrial supply chain innovation, Industry 4.0”. Philip Morris's agricultural supply chain has 1.000 companies with around 22 jobs employed thanks to an agreement with Coldiretti, underlines Hannappel. While the industrial chain of the two Bologna poles exceeds 7 companies.
During the digital event, the Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin instead he underlined the need to facilitate foreign investment, not just domestic investment.
“The characteristic of our country is that of many little ones who, in the past, managed to unite in districts. Today the districts, perhaps, are no longer territorial. but they can be supply chain districts. It is a change of the district model which, with a strong and competitive leader in the world, can be aligned in a new development model”, explained the Deputy Minister. "The Mise has 25 billion in incentives in its budget all about technological development. The other front is research which means researcher, universities, schools, training at all levels. This is the challenge facing the country and, if we are able to accompany this transition, I believe we will be able to multiply what is a great example of Philip Morris's investment”.
Philip Morris's investment in the Crespellano hub in Bologna "has qualified the tobacco supply chain and that part of agriculture that is related to it and it is certain that this is in line with the PNRR which puts many of its objectives on research and development but also on the development of the skills that are necessary in the world of work", declared the Confederal Secretary of the CISL, George Graziani, retracing the birth of that investment.
“There was a plan for this large investment in the Bologna area and together with the Region, the territory and the social partners, due to the law of the attractiveness of investments, it became a system – added Graziani -. This is based on social and territorial cohesion, it is based on the ability to be able to attract and qualify a territory compared to a multinational company which fielded one of the most important investments in the Region and in the country in recent years and was also included in the territorial qualification point of view of the required skills”.
