Piemonte, the northwestern Italian region, has a chance to become a key logistics hub in the European Union. Two major European railway corridors will cross in the proximity of Novara, boosting its strategic value. With European decision-making shifting towards Bruxelles, “we are back in the spotlight” and at the heart of European connectivity, argues regional President Alberto Cirio. 

What can Piemonte offer to foreign investors? 

Piemonte is the third Italian region for number of foreign companies and second for value added produced by industrial foreign companies. This is a very important figure because multinationals don’t have any allegiance to our territory, they go where they find it more functional to their needs. The fact that they choose Piemonte means we are an attractive region for FDI. There is also an undervalued element in FDI attractiveness, which relates to clustering. For example, Silicon Box is investing €3.2bn and creating 1600 jobs in Novara. When I met their CEO, he mentioned that they first started scouting that site because of its closeness to Amazon, which opened a distribution centre around the corner from the site chosen by Silicon Box. He argued that Amazon knows the business landscape, and them choosing that area was a strong signal. Those investors that are looking for logistics will naturally come to Piemonte.

Alberto Cirio

How has the regional logistics offer evolved over the years?  

Piemonte used to be somewhat at the margin of development strategies as Italy has a very Rome-centric vision. When the decision-making started shifting towards Bruxelles, we were back in the spotlight. Today, I’m planning strategies with regions like Baden-Württemberg, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Ticino. On top of that, we are at the heart of European transport connectivity, which has never been the case. Thanks to the Lisbon-Kyiv and Genova-Rotterdam railway corridors, which once completed will cross in the proximity of Novara, we are at the heart of European logistics. 

In this context, how do you see Piemonte’s industrial transition pan out? 

The slowdown in automotive has affected the regional economy, but that impact has now been mitigated by other sectors like aerospace, which employs 35,000 people and has a turnover of about €8bn per year. The aerospace industry gave a chance for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) working in the automotive value chain to find new markets for their good and services. It’s a sector that is growing rapidly, also because of the growing demand for security and defence, which is driving new investment in the sector. 

At the same time, we need to secure the success of automotive – manufacturing as a whole provides for one-third of the salaries in this region. We have to work with Stellantis to shore up its local production. At the same time, we are working to welcome other players. Tariff barriers for vehicles produced outside the European Union will be a reality and foreign producers have understood this. As a result of that, we have become the object of interest of big automotive companies, Chinese producers in particular, that come to scout the region at least for their assembly lines. We can offer them the whole ecosystem. We have the industrial know-how, the value chain, the university. 

Italy still suffers from high electricity prices. Has the region any leeway to mitigate their impact? 

Yes, we have it. We are amongst the largest producers of hydroelectric power in Italy. The regional government has now secured the management of  hydroelectric power concessions [which used to sit with the national government]. We have now designed a mechanism for new concessions where the producer allocates some production to the region. In this way, we can support new investment through discounted electricity rates; we can support companies that are going through the challenges of an industrial transition; and we can support social policies too.