Eight million euros more in the bill from February 2022 to today: the increases in energy costs are costing the Reda group, a historic Piedmontese wool mill. “From February to today, the price per megawatt hour has doubled to € 570, but the 2020 average was € 120-130 – explains CEO Ercole Botto Poala -. This means that costs have risen 4.7 times since 2020. The problem is that in this context most of the operators do not make contracts with companies which are therefore on the free market and pay for energy at the daily price set by the stock exchange. This entails the difficulty of being able to calculate the production costs and then adjust the price lists ». The paradox is that «at a time when the market has recovered and the world after the pandemic wanted to restart, there is a part of the supply chain that has difficulty in dealing with precision to the detriment of margins. In fact, behind the growth in turnover there is a strong reduction in cash which for companies that in the two years of the pandemic had only costs and no revenues, such as fashion, means a lack of resources to finance the recovery. Reda Group will close the year with revenues of over 100 million euros, but I can’t make any predictions about the margins ».
The price increases of finished products are already being seen in various sectors. «For those of fashion they will arrive in the next seasons – warns Botto Poala -. Someone must urgently intervene at European level on this issue ”.