12 years after being seized, the former Ilva in Taranto tries to start again

Twelve years ago at the Ilva plant in Taranto, on 26 July, the Magistracy seized the plant for environmental crimes and arrested the Riva family, then owners and directors of the factory, and their managers. It was the start of the crisis that is still ongoing. Twelve years later, the company, which is now Acciaierie d'Italia in extraordinary administration, is trying to restart with an ad hoc plan, which envisages that in 2026 the three blast furnaces will all be permanently in operation. It will be accompanied by the extraordinary redundancy fund, on which the company and unions signed an agreement last night at the Ministry of Labour. Positive and unanimous judgements of the metalworking unions. In the meantime, they are moving towards the launching of the tender to bring the company back to the market to a new private party.

A first key point of the agreement is the reduction of Acciaierie's employees in extraordinary redundancy. A month ago, initiating the procedure, the company had made a request for 5,200 employees, more than 50 per cent of the workforce, which is now just under 10,000. Then, at the government-union-company summit last Wednesday at Palazzo Chigi, the first step forward was taken, with the reduction of the proposed lay-off from 5,200 to 4,700. On Thursday 25, when the negotiations on social shock absorbers started at the Ministry of Labour, the extraordinary redundancy fund was further reduced, first to 4,200 employees, then to 4,100 and finally to 4,050, the number on which the signatures arrived. Of the 4,000, 3,500 are in Taranto, 270 in Genoa, 175 in Novi Ligure and the rest distributed in small numbers in the other plants.

There are also other elements that facilitated the signing of the agreement. The fund will be financially strengthened by a supplement that the company will make. This will bring the cassa itself to cover 70 per cent of the salary. After years of social shock absorbers, the employees of Acciaierie will be put on an equal footing with their colleagues of Ilva in extraordinary administration. The latter is the company that owns the plants that Acciaierie operates under lease. Ilva in as has had employees in lay-offs for several years and they take, through an ad hoc appropriation of the law, integration. The latter - now about 1,600 - are employees that ArcelorMittal first and Acciaierie d'Italia later did not reabsorb. Other new features of the agreement are then the one-off payment, decided by the commissioners of AdI to re-motivate the staff, the possibility of applying smart working, a first, the rotation of the same fund, the declaration that there are "no structural redundancies", the recognised validity of the September 2018 agreement with Mittal, which took over the extraordinary administration of Ilva at the time, and retraining and vocational training. Finally, "employees assigned to maintenance activities and surveillance of activities related to safety and the environment, when directly engaged in specific maintenance programmes, surveillance and activities related to the restart plan, will not be affected by the cigs suspensions".

"As of October 2024, the commissioning of the second blast furnace will take place. This will result in a doubling of steel production and consequently an increase in the availability of steel to be verticalised. This will allow, in line with the new volumes produced, the progressive restarting of all the plants of the group's sites'. This is what is written in the agreement.

To support the activities of the restart plan, it is said in the update to the plan attached to the ministerial agreement, there are resources from the EUR 320 million bridging loan allocated by the European Commission and EUR 300 million from the earmarked assets of Ilva under extraordinary administration'. There is a total, therefore, of EUR 620 million for the restart of the Taranto steel plant. The plan is based, among other things, on the 'identification of the conditions for operating the plants in a normal or orderly manner (safety, environment, quality, costs) and the progressive restart of the idle production plants'. With the start-up of blast furnace 1 between October and November, production in 2024 will stand at 1.9-2.2 million tonnes. Next year, production of 4.5-5 million tonnes is expected with the restart of blast furnace 2 between January and February. The restart of the two blast furnaces will see a preliminary start-up phase of about one month, which is October 2024 for blast furnace 1 and January 2025 for blast furnace 2. From the following month (i.e. November 2024 for blast furnace 1 and February 2025 for blast furnace 2), the two blast furnaces will be in production and then stopped again for further maintenance and set-up work. In 2026, the production trend will improve. Already from the beginning of 2026, blast furnaces 1 and 4 will be stable and from April 2026 blast furnace 2 will be added to them. From spring 2026, the former Ilva in Taranto will have all three of its blast furnaces (1, 2 and 4) back in operation. Finally, again in Taranto, 25 per cent of the industrial maintenance work of the restart plan has already been started, a percentage that rises to 50 per cent at the other sites.