Yesterday afternoon Enterprise Minister Adolfo Urso visited Piombino’s steel works. On the occasion he stated that “Piombino will be one of the four clusters in the national steel industry program that we will present in June. The others will be Terni, Taranto and the Acciaierie del Nord. We need to relaunch these production centres because the entire Italian industry needs steel, and our construction sector needs it too.”
“The rails and materials for rebuilding Ukraine will be able to leave from Piombino. It will be a huge operation and a rapidly expanding market,” he added, emphasizing the importance of the agreements signed on March 1st with Metinvest Danieli for the construction of a new eco-friendly steel plant with a state-of-the-art electric furnace, and with Jsw for upgrading the rail rolling mills.
“There are industrial areas and there is a port that allows raw materials and products to be handled in the best way. There is a steel culture too.”
The new steel plant is expected to start operating in 2027. Until then, Mr. Urso admits, “the process of relaunching industries will have to be accompanied by appropriate labour policies. We don’t want to leave anyone alone, but we see the temporary redundancy fund period as a time for vocational training. There are funds in the National Recovery & Resilience Plan for Industry 5.0 amounting to €13 billion. In agreement with the EU, we will be allocating 10 % of these funds to training.”
Translation by Giles Foster
