Logistics and transport, Verona Last is the leading hub

Il Sole 24 Ore dedicates a series of videos to the Its Academy, the spearhead of training that supports the placement of young people in companies. This episode's guest is the Its Academy Last, headquartered at Interporto di Verona, an excellence in training talent in the logistics and transport sector. Ten new courses will start in October, between the first and second year, the Its Last, attended by 450 students. An excellence in talent training in the field of sustainable mobility, active since 2011. The employment rate one year after graduation is 95 per cent. Around 70 per cent of the teaching staff comes from the world of production, and there are more than 400 associated companies, both small and multinational, for which it is essential to be able to count on a qualified workforce. We talked about this with the president of Its Academy Last Silvano Stellini and the director Laura Speri.

The Its Last courses are all of 1,900 hours, all carried out in the classroom, in workshop activities, and 'on the job'. A little gem are the three-month Erasmus experiences, 13 weeks in total, to complete the foreign language and soft skills for the benefit of the students. "Logistics as a discipline has also entered our homes, our companies. It has also entered non-logistics companies. So we need technical students who are able to know the entire supply chain. This has increased the need and we are struggling to keep up with the need that companies have. Internationalisation has also become a key issue for logistics companies, as has the issue of sustainability.

The latest Indire monitoring confirms the Its Academy Last at the top. "We are really proud of this result. This is the fourth consecutive year," Speri emphasises, "that 100 per cent of our pathways obtain the award. This is undoubtedly due to the employment rate, which is consistent with the scope of the pathway. We are at 95 per cent. So we manage to attract students, they enrol with us, make the selections, and very few drop out. That is definitely an indication of quality. And then certainly the experience abroad, not only the internships abroad, but also educational visits that increase the value of our pathway'.

The NRP has invested 1.5 billion in this area, but the additional funding will end in 2026. 'We are renovating a building,' Stellini emphasises, 'to create laboratories and classrooms. Virtual and real laboratories of excellence concerning logistics, the automotive sector. In this way our students are able to simulate real business processes that they will find in the company. We will build new labs between December and March 2026 and they will be national excellence. We will build them inside the University Campus of Verona Santa Marta. So our students will enter the university. This is a source of pride that I think our students and also our companies will like".

All the new opportunities, laboratories and poles of excellence rely on funding from the NRP, which ends in 2026. Then what happens? "The NRP has given a strong boost. We have increased membership, created wonderful innovative laboratories, structured and organised our foundations and this must be maintained. But with the ordinary funding we have had so far, the 48 million at national level, it is unthinkable. After the NRP there is talk of more important ordinary funding, 300 million a year, which would be the minimum to be able to continue running these laboratories and managing the structures as they have been organised up to now. Communication is also crucial. "A push has been made to publicise this system of excellence, but we still need to continue along this road. It is still a long road.