Ex Ilva: deadline for offers expires, Flacks steps out

The race for the former Ilva loses the Flacks Group piece. While there are only a few hours left until the deadline for submitting binding offers, the American fund withdraws, saying it is "able to update the offer only after meeting Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni".

In recent days the American fund had clarified that it was still in the competition for the former Ilva, but said it was awaiting a call from the government to discuss their proposal. A meeting that, until now, has not yet taken place.

The countdown for the submission of offers expires today, at midnight on Sunday, and various variables continue to orbit around the former Ilva. On the one hand there is Jindal's proposal, which had already been updated in August taking into account the closure of the hot area, on the other there is the role of the Italian consortium led by Federacciai, which however seems to be increasingly far from the possibility of transforming the expression of interest into a proposal, even if it is not excluded that some companies could move independently.

The tender was launched in July 2024 after the Minister of Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso had ordered the extraordinary administration of Acciaierie d'Italia Spa. Updated several times and then relaunched, the deadline was moved from 15 October to today, 8 November, precisely to give more time to the companies that had access to the dataroom.

This time, however, the tender takes place with decidedly different conditions. The systems in the hot area are definitively turned off, after having remained in pre-heating for a few days, following the ruling of the Court of Cassation. A stop that represented the full implementation of what was established by the Court of Appeal of Milan.

But the future of the former Ilva is also being shaped in terms of employment. The company has in fact requested an extraordinary redundancy fund for a maximum of 8,622 workers, from the current 4,450, which was the subject of the latest meeting with the unions at the Ministry of Labour. A table that has been re-adjourned to November 10th since no agreement has been reached which, according to Fim, Fiom and Uilm, is still far away due to the lack of "a future to resume work".

The path to follow is that of green steel. The president of Puglia Antonio Decaro reiterated this, as did the minister Urso, who however did not hide how Ilva's battle continues to be a "difficult battle".

"The judiciary has chosen to close the blast furnaces - he recalled - and we must work on the prospects of green technologies, which are already implemented in all the other Italian steel plants".

The commitment to employment prospects and decarbonisation was confirmed by the government during the last round table at Palazzo Chigi, also through discussions with some investee companies and Rheinmetall. However, we still have to wait a little longer for the unions' request for a timetable. The undersecretary to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano had explained this, at least not until "the factors of uncertainty are resolved". A few hours after the resolution of the last issue, i.e. that of the sale after the decision of the Supreme Court, the next steps will be discussed in a subsequent meeting at Palazzo Chigi, scheduled for mid-November.