Beko Europe confirms 1,935 redundancies, but Mimit demands a Plan B

The Turkish home appliances multinational Beko Europe at yesterday's meeting at Mimit, chaired by Minister Adolfo Urso, confirmed the 1,935 redundancies announced at various sites in our country (equal to 44% of the total number of Italian workers). As well as the 110 million euro investment in the three-year period 2025-2028 and the maintenance of production and employment levels throughout 2025. The unions, from Fiom to Fim and Uilm, have reiterated that the plan is not acceptable and have asked the government to press for it to be changed and to exercise the golden power immediately, assuming it is actually effective. For Maurizio David Sberna, Beko Europe's external relations manager, however, the plan 'cannot change' because it is already the result of a mediation with respect to the initial version and guarantees the company's sustainability in the medium to long term.

The Beko crisis is of a certain complexity. Minister Urso himself explained that 'it goes back a long way, well before the Merloni group decided to sell the company to its main competitor, Whirlpool, when many people then said that the sale would jeopardise the domestic appliance industry, the pride of Italian-made products'. The ministry pointed out that over the years sites have been closed in Nocera Umbra, Fabriano, Turin, Brembate, Refrontolo, Trento, Carinaro, Teverola, None. And then more recently in Naples, where 'in this legislature a solution was found with the productive reconversion of the plants and the safeguarding of the employees,' ministerial sources pointed out. Having reached this point, Urso asked Beko Europe to "present an assertive industrial plan that provides for significant investments in Italy and a production and employment plan that corresponds to the prescriptions of the golden power, both with reference to the overlap with the other Whirlpool plants in Europe and with those of Beko in Romania". On this point, however, Sberna assured that the plan 'complies with the regulatory framework'.

Our country is not the only one at the centre of the reorganisation of the multinational, which 'before Italy has already launched a restructuring plan in Poland and the United Kingdom,' explained Sberna. Moreover, the dispute is moving in a scenario in which we are witnessing massive investments by Chinese players in Europe and the consequent conquest of market shares. This means that all the production capacity that there is in the factories will no longer be needed in the long term because it is difficult to reverse the course. To say, at Beko in Italy, on average there is 38% plant saturation. In Europe, data from Gfk, presented by Beko Europe, show a downward curve in the volumes of the main appliances that make up the so-called white goods produced by European players, from 49.1 million pieces in 2015 and a market share of 67.3% to 40.3 million in 2023 with a market share of 53.3%. Quick calculation: European manufacturers lost 9 million units and 14 points of market share. Asian manufacturers, on the other hand, rose from 17.4 million units in 2015 (23.9% of the market) to 26.7 million units (35.3% of the market) over the same period.

On the part of the multinational there is willingness not to change the plan but to identify how to manage it. Certainly the long timeframe could help because, although Beko Europe claims to be losing around 180 million euros a year in our country, the production sites will remain operational as they are until the end of 2025. The plans on which the negotiations will have to work are many, from redundancy incentives to retraining to early retirements that could affect an estimated 400 people. And then the reindustrialisation of the sites. But this will be discussed again in 2025, at the next meeting scheduled for mid-January.