Without a plan that is compatible with health, the shutdown of the last blast furnace will effectively amount to a closure

When readers encounter the term ‘ex-Ilva’, they often turn the page. This has been the case for fourteen years, and the reason is understandable. This time, however, a pause is warranted. Today, 5 October, the Milan Court of Appeal has rejected the second application for a stay of proceedings filed by Ilva and Acciaierie d’Italia, which are under special administration. The 27 July decree therefore remains in force, ordering the shutdown of the hot end in Taranto – that is, the plants producing primary steel – by the end of October. In the eleven-page order, the judges state that, even at the cost of shutting down the blast furnaces, “the protection of the right to health must in any case take precedence”, citing Article 41 of the Constitution. With the shutdown of these facilities, Italy will cease to produce integrated-process steel; around 2,500 workers in related industries risk losing their jobs, and the tender for the sale will reach the final bidding stage on 15 October, with no one knowing what will remain to be sold.

The next step is on 20 October, when the Joint Divisions of the Court of Cassation will examine the commissioners’ appeal. Meanwhile, the factory is grinding to a halt of its own accord. The ore has run out, as no further orders have been placed since 27 July, and restocking it would require new resources and weeks of shipping. Attempts are being made to use slabs sourced from abroad. Blast furnace 2, the last one still in operation, is entering the pre-heating phase. The government itself, at its latest meeting with the trade unions, described the shutdown as “inevitable”. It has summoned them back to Palazzo Chigi on Wednesday.

Preheating is a maintenance shutdown. The blast furnace stops producing pig iron but remains hot, so that it can be restarted. In Taranto, the procedure began on 16 September. In the charge fed in from the top, the proportion of ore is reduced and that of coke increased, until only coke is being loaded. When these layers reach the lower part of the furnace, the tuyere zone and the ladle fill with incandescent coke, which retains the heat. During the final pours, liquid pig iron and slag are tapped off and the ladle is emptied as much as possible. The hot blast from the tuyères is then reduced to a minimum. Without ore, no cast iron is formed, and within 12 to 36 hours the plant ceases production entirely. During normal operation, the flame in front of the tuyères exceeds two thousand degrees and the cast iron emerges from the ladle at around one thousand five hundred degrees. During preheating, that heat is barely maintained and the furnace cools slowly. Cooling water continues to circulate and the ladle must be monitored day and night. Blast furnace gas, rich in carbon monoxide, must be handled safely.

Preheating is reversible, but only for a few weeks. Every day, the furnace loses heat and consumes coke. If the crucible cools down too much, residual cast iron and slag solidify, and restarting becomes a lengthy and costly process, requiring oxygen lances to reopen the taphole. Any sudden change in temperature damages the refractories (the bricks lining the furnace), as has already happened at blast furnace 2. To restart, the sequence is reversed – less coke and more ore – with the hot blast reintroduced gradually. It then takes days for the pig iron to return to normal quality. Coking plants cannot simply be switched off either. The silica bricks in the batteries crack when the temperature falls below around 600 degrees, and to preserve them, they must be kept warm with gas even when they are not in production.

To shut down the furnace permanently, the charge is removed from the furnace, the ‘salamandra’ – that is, the cast iron remaining at the bottom of the crucible – is tapped out, and it takes around twenty days for the plant to cool down. From there, operations generally only resume by rebuilding the furnace, as happened with blast furnace 1, which was shut down in 2012 and restarted in 2013. Preheating serves to buy a few weeks’ time. Without a plan to restart operations under conditions that are safe for health, every week spent in standby mode will make restarting more expensive, to the point where it becomes uneconomical, and the technical shutdown will effectively become a closure that nobody has decided upon.

Since the seizure in July 2012, the issue has remained unresolved. In fourteen years, our Republic has failed to reconcile the protection of public health with steel production, and instead of taking responsibility, it has resorted to passing the buck. We are in a state of emergency, they say. But an emergency that has lasted fourteen years deserves to be called by another name.

The proceedings stem from a civil initiative launched in 2021 by eleven citizens, including a minor, with the support of the Genitori Tarantini association. It is a collective injunction, often confused with a class action seeking damages, which seeks to halt activities harmful to health. It is not a new criminal seizure. The citizens have brought a claim for protection before the civil court, which has remained without an adequate response. Politicians should also be asking themselves questions about this.

With the shutdown of the hot end, Taranto loses its primary production. Without pig iron, the converters and continuous casting lines – which produce the slabs for the rolling mills – also come to a standstill. Rolling can continue using slabs produced elsewhere, and a Marcegaglia contract for between 200,000 and 240,000 tonnes on a tolling basis ensures partial continuity. But the problem is structural. Who will guarantee, over time, the quantity, quality and prices of slabs that are compatible with the competitiveness of the rolling mills, including those in Genoa and Novi Ligure? It is unclear how the group will remain united whilst its historic vertical integration is being dismantled.

In the ancillary sectors, collective redundancies affecting around 2,500 workers have been suspended, at the government’s request, at least until the Court of Cassation has ruled. Alongside those directly employed who have been alternating between the factory and the redundancy scheme for years, there is a more vulnerable section of the city, lacking the same safeguards. The government has promised a form of redundancy pay different from that for permanent redundancy, extended to the supply chain, but the decree has been postponed pending the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Then there is the sale. In the running are Jindal and the American fund Flacks, as well as the consortium of fourteen companies brought together by Federacciai, which is interested in rolling and finishing. The Italian consortium is leaving out the hot-rolling sector, which is the most challenging part. The government is open to public ownership “if there is a solid and credible business plan”. Following Invitalia’s entry in 2021 and the appointment of an administrator, hearing the state ask someone else for a credible plan is rather striking.

The Prime Minister said that work is being carried out “based on decisions that do not depend on us”, as Luigi Di Maio said when he was a minister in 2018. Minister Adolfo Urso spoke of “a labyrinth that the judiciary has created around this company”. The judges’ decision is independent; industrial decisions depend on politics. It was up to the government – and to its predecessors, now in opposition – not to treat decarbonisation as a mere slogan. It was up to the government to negotiate energy at steel industry rates and to entrust the commissioners with the task of reviving the factory, as well as managing it. The judges have done their job because politicians, at both national and local level, have failed to do theirs.

Since 2012, the former Ilva has survived through a series of ‘Save Ilva’ decrees, exemptions and extensions. On 23 September, the Senate passed Decree 133, which allocates a further €100.5 million to ensure the continued operation of a factory that is, in the meantime, winding down. The scope for repeating this operation is limited. In 2024, in Case C-626/22, the Court of Justice of the European Union clarified that, where there are serious risks to the environment and health, the deadlines for compliance cannot be repeatedly extended and operations must be suspended. The Constitutional Court had ruled in the same vein in 2018 and, in the Priolo case, in 2024. The special law for Taranto requested by the region and the municipality will be judged on its merits. If it merely extends the deadlines, it is yet another ‘save Ilva’ measure. A law that funds remediation, transition, training, redeployment and new industrial sites could, on the other hand, also provide guarantees to investors. Meanwhile, the M5S, which in 2019 removed the criminal immunity shield, thereby offering ArcelorMittal a pretext to leave, is proposing up to 150,000 euros to every worker who resigns. Today, Electrolux has also proposed the same measure. After all, Stellantis has cut its workforce by 13,000 since 2021. Who cares if manufacturing is reduced to the size of a postage stamp?

The ‘health versus work’ dilemma has been a false dichotomy for twenty years. It can only be resolved with an industrial plan that incorporates environmental considerations and specifies which technology to use, what mix of integrated cycle and new plants, what timescales, what energy sources and at what cost. Senator Mario Turco keeps repeating that everything was ready for the electric furnace in 2022. That is not the case. The one billion from the NRRP was earmarked for the pre-reduction plant, the DRI, and not even that went ahead. Removed from the NRRP in 2023, that one billion ended up with the Ministry of Economic Development (MIMIT) for a vague ‘decarbonisation’ initiative. On 16 September, the government announced DRI-fuelled electric furnaces. It remains to be seen where, when and by whom they will be built.

Firstly, an implementation plan for the measure, including a programme for asbestos removal and dust reduction, which specifies when and under what conditions the ‘hot’ area can resume operations. The few weeks of pre-heating serve this purpose. Another extension would solve nothing.

Secondly. An industrial role for the state, with a plan specifying how many tonnes, using what technology, at what energy costs, over how many years and with what guarantees for direct and indirect employment. Anyone wishing to purchase the disused site may do so within the framework of that plan.

Thirdly. A site-wide agreement with the trade unions for genuine co-management of the transition, including training, redeployment and a say in investment decisions. There must be checks and sanctions for those who fail to honour their commitments – something that was lacking in the 2018 agreement with ArcelorMittal.

Fourth. Enough of meetings that yield no decisions. The meeting on 16 September was the twentieth to be held in the ‘green room’ since 2023, and it ended with the postponement of the decree for workers. At times, one gets the impression that these meetings serve more to provide material for the press conference afterwards than to actually solve problems. A discussion only makes sense if commitments are made, with deadlines and accountability. When it serves merely to postpone matters, it becomes a rather cynical form of social anaesthesia.

The protests resumed on 14 September with a strike and roadblocks by ancillary industries, and today Fim, Fiom, Uilm and Usb are calling for a single-issue regional council meeting. We need a dispute that involves the whole city. In the 1990s, Taranto came to a standstill over far less. The protest has been weakened by the redundancy scheme – the most effective of tranquillisers – and the rift between those defending the factory and those who want it closed. But there is also a responsibility on the part of those who have resigned themselves to the redundancy scheme and have got bogged down in calls for round-table discussions instead of building a campaign, and who now risk being perceived as part of the ritual rather than as those who disrupt it.

Steel is a strategic material, as every minister keeps repeating. But in a country where everything is strategic, nothing really is. Without Taranto, Italy depends on other countries for semi-finished products and flat products from an integrated production cycle, and importing them from too far away – for a manufacturing country like ours – is costly and dangerous. Politics only turns its attention to industry when forced to, adopting the slapdash attitude of daily political banter. Real solutions cost votes and must be argued for amidst a chorus of boos. So it has chosen not to decide.

We hope that the end-of-October deadline will confirm the failure of the illusion that we can continue to postpone matters. Taranto needs to be given an industrial future and jobs that are compatible with good health. The government must set out how this will be achieved, with what resources and within what timeframe.