The interview released yesterday by the president of the Italian iron and steel industry Antonio Gozzi to the "Corriere Economia" on the future of Taranto and Piombino sounds of bitterness and surrender in the face of requests to purchase the very powerful (Anglo) Indian iron and steel industry. The difficulty in putting together some Italian entrepreneurs in the sector is such as to push the "very private" president to even invoke a public presence of the State which would return to steel after twenty years. Gozzi knows that the operation is unrealistic and juridically impossible both for European constraints and for the obvious reasons of the poverty of our public coffers.
Ilva of Taranto and Piombino are under foreign fire not due to a cynical and cheating fate but, after the unhappy experience of the Lucchinis and the bitter story of the Rivas, due to a total lack of aggregation capacity of the Italian steel industry. It was (after the privatization season) also in the cases of the stainless steel of Terni (sold to the Germans) and of Cogne (sold to a Swiss entrepreneur); if it hadn't been for the happy pairing of the Amenduni family and Louis Dunwalder, even the productive excellence of the Bolzano steelworks would have disappeared, ready to be dismantled by the Falck family.
Today the firmament of the Italian steel industry is crossed by a dozen protagonists capable of managing their vegetable garden (at best). Some of these with very positive results in terms of accounts and competitiveness but equally good at playing hide-and-seek when the strategic issues of alliances or plant and commercial synergies are brought up on the table.
It is true that the capital effort required to face the not only financial disasters of Piombino and Taranto are such and so many as to require an entrepreneurial "line-up" made up of determined entrepreneurs and far-sighted banks but, above all, of authoritative leaders in the sector, for personal and professional history.
Invoking a new "public hand" or the usual Arvedi means renewing the four cantons in which the country's steel industry has taken refuge for years. Combining Gnudi's ability with men, primary and supply chain companies, banks and international alliances seems to be the only viable way to firmly maintain a steel production base capable of supporting its mechanical manufacturing industry in the country's perspective.
If not so far the Indians who will hold us hostage like the two marines of Delhi.
