Italcementi closes the former Cementir Taranto after 60 years

With the definitive closure of the former Cementir, now Cemitaly after the passage a few years ago from the Caltagirone group to Italcementi, another piece of Taranto’s industrial history sets. In fact, Cementir arrived in the 1960s together with the former Italsider. With Belleli (the offshore oil platform industry which was abandoned in the 2000s) and many other companies, also closed in the meantime, he formed the production structure of the Apulian city. At the Ministry of Labor, Italcementi has definitively confirmed that the plant closes. Confirmation that follows the start of the collective dismissal procedure that the group had opened for the 51 units of Taranto last July. The former Cementir had already been completely at a standstill for almost three years. And the staff, initially more than 100 units, had already dropped to about 70 5 years ago to finally reach the current 51.
The last year of extraordinary cigs
At the Ministry of Labor, building trade unions and the company have agreed on a year of extraordinary redundancy fund for cessation of activity which starts from 16 September. The Cemitaly employees are already on hand. The unions explain that the cigs for discontinued activity serves to mitigate the effects of the closure. Furthermore, an incentive exodus is foreseen for those who in the meantime want to definitively terminate the employment relationship and the possibility that, in the face of job positions opened by Italcementi in other plants in Italy, the employees of Taranto, if they so wish, will be able to apply. A candidacy that can also be made in the 24 months following the conclusion of the new year of layoffs.
The cement produced with steel slag
Cementir arrived with State Participations and the strategy of public intervention. For many years, it has produced a specific type of cement using slag, a material from the steel industry. The former Cementir is in fact very close to the steel mill. Then a seizure that involved, years ago, the slag park of the former Ilva, precluded this possibility. Before the summer, Cemitaly told the unions that the 51 employees are structurally in excess due to the definitive cessation of the activity. Cemitaly, which arrived in 2018, highlighted that since 2013 the Taranto plant was in a condition of prolonged production shutdown. With the three production ovens shut down, the site had become just a grinding center. This is for three reasons: serious market and product crisis, difficulty in obtaining blast furnace slag from the nearby ArcelorMittal plant (formerly Ilva) and the impossibility of otherwise obtaining the raw material at sustainable costs. Already in October 2018, Cemitaly had announced the dismissal of employees, then 67. Layoffs then blocked and converted with the extraordinary layoff.
The company: no alternative to the stop
In the cigs period, initially extended until December 2020 and then transformed into a Covid cig which ends next September 15, Cemitaly has evaluated the possibility of a recovery, but the conditions have not been met for the company. Cemitaly argued that alternative solutions to layoffs are not possible and the possibility of converting the site to other cement productions is not feasible due to both the more general structure of the group and the current situation in the cement market. In addition to decommissioning the plant, Cemitaly will also return the restored calata 4 to the Port Authority.
After having been in the State Holdings, the former Cementir had moved to the Caltagirone group which, years ago, had also announced a relaunch plan with investments for the site. The Ilva events, starting from the seizure of the hot area in July 2012, combined with the involution of the market, however, led Caltagirone to take a step back and stop the announced plan.
The union: relocation to reclamation
«Now Italcementi – declares Francesco Bardinella of Fillea CGIL – will ask for the suspension of the integrated environmental authorization from the Ministry of Ecological Transition. For a legal obligation, he will have to make the necessary interventions to make the industrial complex safe. If there is a new activity, it is clear that this will first have to absorb the unemployed. The average age of the employees is around 50 years old. They cannot be retired in the short term. If, on the other hand, the activity on that site will no longer resume, we will unfortunately have a deserted, abandoned factory that will go towards decay ». Filca Cisl, with Silvio Gullì, asks that the former Cementir staff be reconverted in reclamation starting from those of the plant. “Considering the absence of specialized companies in this area despite the large number of remediation that Taranto needs, I believe it is of fundamental importance to provide Taranto with a pool of trained and specialized workers in remediation” comments Gullì.

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