Alliances in the steel industry and hypotheses of a pole of household appliances
News of the opening of industrial crises follow one another and in the rain it is even difficult to see the differences. Only in the last few days has there been discussion of significant job cuts at Menarini (700 jobs), at the international express courier Tnt (850), at Indesit (1,425 redundancies) and some signs of cloudiness come from Natuzzi. The feeling is that the average size of the companies that ask for shelter from the Ministry of Economic Development is increasing and consequently the difficulties in trying to resolve individual cases are increasing.
As long as companies such as Omsa, the textile factories of Airola or Miroglio of Ginosa were involved, the ministry's task force managed to behave like a small investment bank. He was looking for entrepreneurs willing to take over closing businesses by taking over the plants, saving jobs and perhaps changing their production mission. In more than a few cases, the operation was successful (attracting companies such as Adler and QBell) but when it comes to large steel companies, the entire household appliance or pharmaceutical sector or in any case important groups such as Marangoni or Acc di Mel it is clear that therapy can no longer be the same. Two things would be needed: either a drastic intervention on the cost of labor or extremely targeted industrial policies.
Let's take the household appliances sector. All the companies operating in Italy are having a bit of difficulty, from Whirlpool to Electrolux up to Indesit which in recent days announced a shock plan according to which the 33% of the group's employees are considered redundant. In the 90s the 45% of the white sold in Europe was produced in Italy, today we are squeezed between the high-end German brands (Miele, Bosch) and the new producing countries such as Poland and Turkey. During the Monti government, the trade association, Ceced
Confindustria had repeatedly threatened to relocate if the government did not intervene. Now, however, we are already beyond the regulatory time and in recent days Maurizio Castro, a former PDL parliamentarian and above all a former Electrolux manager, has proposed the creation of a national white pole led by Indesit which «absorbs the Italian sites of Whirlpool, Electrolux and minor producers with related components". Castro thinks that the operation should be assisted by the Italian Strategic Fund and perhaps open up to a partnership with the Japanese Nidec. «We have missed the train of innovation. The performance and structure of the refrigerators of the 60s is identical to that of today, the only technological innovation was the ice crusher».
