Piedmont suffers for the car, but looks to logistics, aerospace and strategic dossiers

It will be necessary to grit one's teeth until 2026 before seeing the volumes of Mirafiori, the symbolic factory of the automotive industry in Piedmont, rise again, with the production of the Fiat 500 hybrid. The car remains the great sickness of a region that has seen production in the transport sector fall in recent years, with the exception of the aerospace sector, which is instead growing, as the latest economic situation drawn up by Unioncamere Piemonte reveals. But the challenges for the coming months concern logistics and infrastructure, the vocation for innovation of the City of Turin and some strategic dossiers such as the Aerospace City and the development of the university campus.

'We are in a phase in which,' explains Giuseppe Russo, director of the Einaudi Centre, 'a twenty-year phase has come to an end, characterised by weak domestic demand replaced by a competitive foreign demand. A trend that Piedmont has, in its own way, anticipated, recording a drop in exports of 2.5%, due to the strong conditioning of the automotive sector. In this context, Piedmont has, Russo reasons, a strong point, 'represented by a manufacturing industry that is now very diversified, starting with capital goods,' and a weak point, the lack of advanced tertiary sector, as in Lombardy, and services related to tourism. When industry stops, therefore, Piedmont suffers, which has a compulsory path ahead of it, which is that of innovation and investment in industry.

With regard to the automotive industry, a sector that contracted by 3% in July and by more than 15% since the beginning of the year (Anfia data for Italy) - the main economic node for a region that represents more than 30% of the companies in the Italian supply chain - it is necessary to take time. This is what the trade unions, both the metalworkers and the confederal unions, say, with the aim of preserving skills and know-how and maintaining an industrial fabric that has been measured for months by a drop in production volumes at Stellantis, as well as by the stalemate in the German economy, Piedmont's leading exporting country and leading partner for automotive companies, and, from here on, by the unknowns of the tariffs trade policy imposed by the United States.

Alongside the uncertainties caused by the contraction of production volumes at Stellantis, in Piedmont and in Italy, there is a second issue that generates profound uncertainty and is linked to the transition phase of ownership and corporate structure that affects historical realities such as Italdesign and Iveco. These are just the last two dossiers involving the handover of realities that in Turin and Piedmont count thousands of employees. On 1 October there was a meeting at the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy on the arrival of the Indians of Tata at the helm of Iveco, with the unions raising the issue of public governance on the dossier so as not to lose ground in Italy. In Piedmont, the workers in Iveco, including the engine asset of Fpt Industrial, number about 6,400.

L’intero NordOvest affronterà anche quest’anno l’ultimo trimestre dell’anno con la chiusura del Tunnel del Monte Bianco e il rischio di aggravio sui costi, per tempi e lunghezza dei tragitti, per la movimentazione delle merci, senza contare poi gli aumenti attesi a inizio anno per la tariffa di attraversamento del Frejus. L’apertura della seconda canna del Tunnel autostradale che collega Italia e Francia rappresenta un aiuto ma non risolve i problemi strutturali. Sul versante francese, resta ancora senza una data indicata la riattivazione di Afa, l’Autostrada ferroviaria mentre un altro storico nodo che va verso la definitiva risoluzione nel settore logistica e trasporti è la Asti-Cuneo, percorribile, come da cronoprogramma, a partire da fine anno. La sfida per la regione sarà mettere a sistema i nodi risolti, sfruttare una posizione privilegiata rispetto ai due corridoi europei - Terzo Valico e Torino-Lione - e trarre benefici concreti dallo sviluppo della Zls, le Zone Logistiche Semplificate,