There is a productive fabric that has started to run well above the average of the country, to frame the 2021 assembly of Unindustria Reggio Emilia, returned to the presence, after two years of struggle against Covid, in a symbolic place: the Dal-Digital automation lab, an experiential laboratory of advanced manufacturing, where local companies will be able to experiment with all the new hi-tech 4.0 solutions and transform the blaze of recent months into lasting growth. Evidence of the recovery are the 6 billion euros of exports achieved in the first half of 2021 by companies in the province, more than in the same pre-Covid period of 2019, the forecast of new hires in one in three companies, the production boom , in the engineering sector in particular (+ 55.8% in the second quarter).
The intervention of Fabio Storchi
Talking about the strategic nature of the new laboratory, inaugurated at the end of the meetings, is the intervention of Fabio Storchi, president of the almost one thousand Reggio industrialists associated with Confindustria, dedicated to “The digital city”. «Today the point is not whether the rebound is underway – underlines Storchi – but how to ensure sustained and lasting growth rates from 2022 onwards, seizing the opportunities of the NRP also to mobilize private investments. The Digital Automation Lab is an integral part of the digital excellence pole that is taking shape in the Innovation Park, in the former Officine Reggiane (emblem of local mechanical success in the twentieth century, ed) within which the Fourth Reggio university campus will also find space with new digital lessons from Unimore.
The Industrial Campus
The intangible content that brings with it the new industrial campus of Silk-Faw (the Sino-American joint venture for the production of electric supercars, an investment of 1 billion, ed) belongs fully to this new reality, ed. in Gavassa it will root in our territory not only frontier skills, linked to electric traction and sustainable mobility, but also a new network of relationships extended to the world ». The first asset to be dusted off, remarks Storchi, is the capacity of the Reggio community to dream and “do together”, which 20 years ago allowed us to imagine the Calatrava arches and then build them, as well as the Mediopadana station.
Attracting digital natives
To bring the factory back to the center of a sustainable and cohesive community, Unindustria is now aiming to attract young digital talents from all over Italy with the Virtus Lab project: the goal is to bring 3,000 young people from less fortunate national territories to build a future in Reggio Emilia over the next three years. The fil rouge of the round table with the mayor Luca Vecchi, the rector Carlo Adolfo Porro, the commissioner of the Chamber of Commerce Stefano Landi is the ability of the territory to march in the same direction, which has allowed in a few years to bring from 6 thousand to 13 thousand university students enrolled in the city, to inaugurate the Mediopadana station, the Mapei Stadium and now to build a 200 million euro motorway junction and shape an innovation park in the 250 thousand square meters of abandoned mechanical workshops. The Emilia-Romagna Region is doing its part, and the councilor for Economic development, training and work Vincenzo Colla took the opportunity of the Reggio assembly to announce an unprecedented investment of 100 million euros in the training chain of the Via Emilia .