Asti-Cuneo completed after 34 years: a boost for northern logistics

Logistics in the North West has one more weapon: the completion of the A33 Asti-Cuneo motorway. A long-awaited work for goods travelling between the Ligurian ports, the heart of Piedmont and international markets. After 34 years, a final cost of 1.457 billion euro compared to the 340 million estimated at the beginning, the eternal unfinished project has finally reached completion.

As of today, Tuesday 30 December, the A33 motorway is fully open to traffic from Asti to Cuneo (90 kilometres). With the exception of a five-kilometre stretch where traffic will travel on a single two-way carriageway, in complete safety, while the complete closure of the construction site and the opening of the second carriageway are scheduled for April 2026. The work on the last lot, from Alba to Cherasco, was completed in just 15 months instead of 30, thanks to the employment on site of about 400 people per day, 15 companies and 130 suppliers. The infrastructure fills a historical gap in connections in southern Piedmont, improving the accessibility of an area with a strong agricultural and manufacturing vocation.

The announcement of the motorway's completion came on 30 December, when the Deputy Minister for Infrastructure, Edoardo Rixi, and the President of the Piedmont Region, Alberto Cirio, drove the entire stretch from Asti to the junction with the A6 Turin-Savona motorway (Autostrada dei Fiori) in Marene. Says Rixi: 'This is a historic turning point: a thirty-year-long wound is closed'. Cirio underlines: 'We are in the economic and productive heart not only of Piedmont, but also of the national and European GDP. Just a few kilometres from here there is Ferrero, but also many important companies that work for Ferrero and from today they will have the opportunity to compete with their international competitors without the penalisation of transport'. The concession holder of the A33 is Asti-Cuneo Spa, a company of the Astm (Gavio) group, the second national motorway operator after Aspi (Autostrade per l'Italia).

The event marks the conclusion of one of the country's longest infrastructural vicissitudes, often cited as a negative example of unfinished work due to the succession of blockages, design revisions and financial difficulties that have overlapped over the years. The Asti-Cuneo motorway project formally began on 5 April 1991 with the signing of the first concession. The original project envisaged a work deadline of 1996. The implementation phase, however, immediately proved complex. In 1998 the work was included among those financed by Law 295 and in 2000 Anas started the first construction sites. In 2006, the Asti-Cuneo motorway project company was established, controlled by the Gavio group, which took over the management of the sections already completed and the completion of the work. The first openings to traffic came between 2005 and 2008. From 2012 to 2020 the work entered its most critical phase: for about eight years the construction sites remained substantially at a standstill due to disputes, bureaucratic delays, high costs due to design choices and lack of financial backing. The famous photograph of the unfinished section near Cherasco, which ended up suspended in thin air in an agricultural area, became the symbol of this long paralysis.

The work underwent a crucial breakthrough thanks to the approval of cross-financing by the European Union. This instrument provides for the support of contiguous and economically strong concessionary companies capable of making large investments in support of the motorway to be completed. In particular, this mechanism has made it possible to guarantee the construction of the two missing lots, totalling about 10 kilometres, of the Asti-Cuneo motorway thanks to cross-financing by Satap, the concessionaire company of the A4 Turin-Milan motorway, to cover the construction costs of the work.