It seems that Italian steel does not bring luck to Minister Carlo Calenda. On his table where the managerial disasters of Taranto and Piombino arrived, an attempt was made to put the economic, social and legal implications of the two cases in order to search for the "head" of an intricate thread to relate it to the ball of yarn. The ministerial commitment seemed to have led to credible, concrete and promising solutions.
Yet, in the end, the poison with which the devil's tail is sprinkled seems to throw away the long work and having to start all over again. Let's take Taranto of which we know everything: strategic importance, centrality for the Italian mechanical industry, an indispensable plant. With the award to Arcelor-Mittal and the Marcegaglia Group, it was known of the final obstacle represented by the European Commission and the strict rules of competition.
It didn't take much to understand that the sum declared for the productions of Taranto added to the European ones by both Arcelor-Mittal and the Marcegaglia Group would have fallen under the watchful eye of the Authority and the opposing lobbying forces of the German competition and the international suppliers of the richest market in the world. Perhaps it was worth taking these factors into account by reserving a score for European decisions both in the tender and in the award clauses.
In this regard, the offer of Jindal (which does not have a plant in Europe) combined with that of Arvedi today, if successful, would be fully operational with a significant lightening of the financial and management commitments of the public commissioner. But so be it. According to Brussels, the Marcegaglia Group should leave the albeit modest share in the alliance with Mittal and the Indian giant should put on the market and get rid of the Piombino settlement of Magona d'Italia.
In this European "invitation" Piombino would also add to the agonizing horizon of the Algerian manager of the ex Lucchini steelworks the fate of the city's other great industrial history: the Magona, also once a pearl of the Lucchini family's empire. "Not happy with having cut off our heads once, the executioner asks us to repeat the beheading". This is what is said in the square in Piombino. By now the city, the trade unions, the politics and the economy of the entire Val di Cornia seem resigned to a slow and inexorable drift of its iron and steel activities and to lowering the age-old flag of steel.
There is tiredness as well as skepticism in the face of an Algerian buyer who has never managed to give legs to the relaunch project nor much less oxygen to the asphyxiated and empty coffers of the former steelworks. From him she had support, aid, even political, not indifferent from the City and the Region of Tuscany. Above all, there was a lack of financial leverage necessary for the relaunch, perhaps also due to the restrictions imposed by the Algerian government on the transfer of Issad Rebrab's capital.
A stalemate and total inaction that has been going on for too long, signaled by Commissioner Nardi and challenged by the Minister himself as sufficient reason to cancel the concession contract and start from scratch. To a Rebrab threatened with eviction, forced to take legal action that will nail the fate of the company to the codes and in the courtrooms for a long time, today there is the prospect of seeing Magona d'Italia forced to change hands. To who? When? As?
The company that transforms coils into high added value products cannot do without a partner able to offer the basic laminate. And there aren't many companies making coils in Europe unless Jndal and Arvedi are convinced to roll up their sleeves and switch their projects from the shores of the Ionian to those of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Piombino, therefore, returns through the window, to the table of the Ministry in Via Veneto with one more complication.
A tough test for Carlo Calenda who has in Commissioner Nardi and in the top management of Federacciai interlocutors attested on the stew of the Steelworks (let's save the wire rod train and that of the rails) leaving the fate of the hot part of the old Steelworks to the City.
