Sometimes they come back. Not always. Not as often as it would make up for jobs lost in recent years. But they partly fall. The phenomenon of company re-shoring is also observable in the Northwest. Rarely with companies that have decided to bring delocalized production facilities back to Italy before the pandemic. More frequently because, thanks to the pandemic, orders that had previously been diverted to Asia, China and Turkey in the lead, have returned to this part of Italy.
It is the virus that has changed the rules of logistics. What was affordable two years ago is becoming either impossible or too expensive. For the uncertain delivery times, for the transfer difficulties linked to the barriers and controls imposed by Covid. This is how the orders for the glass shelves of household appliances that had previously fled to the industrial area of Istanbul return to the Cuneo-based companies. Thus, in part, the induced activity of the auto system is recovering, not only of Stellantis but also of German companies that have important suppliers in Piedmont.
Even productions linked to the microchip cycle are back, those that for years have been the exclusive prerogative of Asian countries. The question mark in the coming months concerns the duration of this phenomenon: that is, whether the Northwest, like the whole West, recovers production because it temporarily makes up for the difficulties of world logistics, if in short, whether it acts as a reserve district in Asia for a limited period, or if, on the contrary, what we are witnessing is an authentic reversal of the trend that returns lost productions to the West.
The data from the ministry of economic development say that in Italy the tendency for companies to flee has slowed down in recent years. In the period 2001-2006, the large and medium-sized companies that had relocated were 13.4 per cent of the total. The percentage dropped to 3 percent in the 2015-2017 two-year period. During the same period, 987 companies from abroad arrived in Italy. These are generally companies in the service sector, which therefore do not have a significant impact on overall employment. But it is a fact that the Peninsula is once again becoming attractive, or at least less repulsive for businesses than it was years ago.
There are elements that hinder the palatability of the Italian territory. The first is the cost of energy. According to the forecasts of Standars & Poor’s up to 2025 Italy will be the European country that will suffer the most from the effects of the rise in energy prices. And this will be a competitive disadvantage that the Northwest will suffer in particular compared to its French competitors who can count on the low costs associated with nuclear power plants across the Alps.
The second element that can slow down reshoring in the Northwest is that of logistics. Not only the long deadlines for the creation of a quick connection with France between Turin and Lyon, linked to an ideological opposition that has now been overcome by the advancement of construction sites, but also local choices that have ended up penalizing the Cuneo area.
The decision, taken years ago by the administrations of that territory, not to invest in the Mercantour railway and road tunnel to favor the picturesque and tortuous solution of the Tenda hill ended up depriving the Cuneo area of a serious connection with the southern area of France and also with the Turin area which would have a concrete interest in a fast railway connection if it did not stop in Cuneo but served to get to Nice and Marseille. Not dissimilar problems concern Liguria, which is lagging behind both in the construction of the eaves and in the modernization of the port system of Genoa and its rear port.
In short, the risk is that the favorable conditions for reshoring, also determined by the pandemic revolution, will vanish quickly. A danger that also warns Edoardo Pavesio, protagonist, with the Sila di Orbassano, at the gates of Turin, of a recovery operation in his Italian factories of activities previously emigrated to Poland and Turkey. Sila, a company of the Brero Pavesio family, today manufactures the controls for manual and automatic gearboxes. It has brought back to Italy some productions previously made in Poland and above all it has chosen to build in the peninsula the new command for the change of Iveco vans previously designed for the Chinese plants. “The costs of logistics – explains Pavesio – exploded with the pandemic. And by now customers no longer trust a production system that has lines thousands of kilometers away from the final assembly factories ”.
Of course, it is necessary to take advantage of the opportunity, to consolidate the advantage recovered compared to non-European production sites. Which for the automotive industry, for example, means, as Pavesio recalls, “providing public aid for the entire supply chain”. More generally, it is a question of working on the costs of energy and logistics to bring at least part of the lost manufacturing back to the Northwest.