Ex-Ilva: the never-ending tender. Chronicle of a flop in three acts (and a fourth yet to be written)

When the deadline for the latest tender for the former Ilva expired at midnight on Sunday, only two bids had been received: one from the Cremona-based Arvedi group and one from the Indian firm Jindal. Arvedi is the surprise contender. The Cremona-based group, which produces the same flat-rolled steel products that used to come out of Taranto before the hot rolling mill was shut down, is bidding for Acciaierie d’Italia for the first time, but the former Ilva is no stranger to it. In 2016–2017, during the first tender under the first extraordinary administration, Arvedi was part of the Acciaitalia consortium, alongside Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and Jindal itself. That tender was won by ArcelorMittal, which managed the former Ilva from November 2018 until February 2024, when the current extraordinary administration began. This time, Arvedi has decided to go it alone, breaking away from the consortium of companies led by Federacciai. It was reportedly the presence of the Indian investors that prompted him to enter the fray: had Jindal remained on his own, he would have entered the Italian rolled steel market, where Arvedi – led by 89-year-old Cavaliere Giovanni Arvedi – is the market leader.

For Jindal, however, this marks a return. The Indian group had taken part in the tender that closed in January 2025, but not in the one in September. In the meantime, it had attempted to buy the German company ThyssenKrupp, without success, and had then returned to the former Ilva during a visit to India by the Minister for Enterprise, Adolfo Urso. It is said to be ready to take over both the rolling mill and the hot-rolling section, with a two-million-tonne electric furnace and the import of four million tonnes of slabs – semi-finished steel products – from Oman.

According to Il Sole 24 Ore, both groups are aiming to restart steel production in Taranto using electric furnaces, rather than the blast furnaces, which have now been decommissioned. This is the decarbonisation process that has been touted for over a year as the future of the former Ilva, but which has never been implemented. But now there is no longer a choice: following the Court of Cassation’s confirmation of the suspension ordered by the Milan Court of Appeal, electric furnaces are the only way to restart production and save at least some of the jobs. And this is the crux of the matter. The group has just under ten thousand direct employees, but for 9,600 of them – 8,600 of whom are in Taranto – the company has applied for extraordinary redundancy pay, as production has ground to a halt. Tomorrow, 10 November, negotiations will resume at the Ministry of Labour.

The current situation marks the provisional conclusion of a process that began more than two years ago, in July 2024, after the Minister for Enterprise, Adolfo Urso, had placed Acciaierie d’Italia under special administration. The tender process has been postponed and relaunched several times, and along the way has seen almost all the bidders drop out.

The first call for tenders was issued at the end of July 2024. By the deadline of 10 January 2025, following an initial extension, a total of ten bids had been received, but there were three contenders for the entire complex: the Azerbaijani firm Baku Steel, together with the Azerbaijan Investment Company; the American firm Bedrock Industries; and the Indian firm Jindal Steel International. The Azerbaijani consortium won the bid; it was backed industrially by Baku Steel and financially by the state-owned gas company, SOCAR. Jindal had offered around 200 million euros, but its employment proposal was deemed inferior to that of the Azerbaijani consortium, which was judged to be the best.

The Azerbaijanis, however, never completed the project. They withdrew after the summer of 2025, because Taranto refused to accept the regasification vessel that was also supposed to supply gas to the factory. In the meantime, the government had revised the industrial plan, focusing entirely on decarbonisation.

The second call for bids was issued in early August 2025, and closed on 26 September with what Uilm secretary Rocco Palombella described as a “total failure”. Of the ten bids received, only two covered the entire group: those from the American fund Bedrock Industries and the consortium comprising Flacks Group and Steel Business Europe. Jindal had withdrawn to attempt to buy the German company ThyssenKrupp. And the bids from the two funds, according to Il Sole 24 Ore, were for the same symbolic sum: one euro. Moreover, Bedrock intended to retain only 2,000 employees in Taranto and 1,000 in the rest of Italy.

2026 began with a fatal accident in Taranto, a 24-hour strike and the Flacks and Bedrock bids still unsigned. Then the courts stepped in. On 26 February, the Court of Milan ordered the hot area to be shut down from 24 August, subject to adjustments. In March, Jindal re-entered the fray, formally submitting a new expression of interest after ThyssenKrupp had slipped through its fingers. On 27 July, the Milan Court of Appeal, upholding the appeal lodged by eleven citizens from the ‘Genitori Tarantini’ association, ordered the hot area to be shut down within ninety days. On 29 October, the Joint Divisions of the Court of Cassation rejected the appeals lodged by Ilva and Acciaierie d’Italia, and on 3 November, operations to shut down the blast furnaces began.

Meanwhile, the tender process continued to be postponed. As reported by Il Foglio, every time a deadline approached, Urso would extend the deadline, announcing the arrival of a new investor: on 1 April, he had promised to finalise the deal by the end of the month, and on 25 August, the tender was postponed due to interest from a Qatari group, the name of which was never disclosed. Meanwhile, in mid-August, Federacciai and fourteen Italian companies had submitted an expression of interest that excluded the hot-rolling sector, at Meloni’s own request, and in early October they had secured a postponement of the deadline from 15 October to 8 November.

In recent days, the field has thinned out further. Bedrock had already dropped off the radar. The Czech firm Ce Industries, which had been granted access to the company’s data without ever formalising its bid, has withdrawn. Federacciai, which had secured a postponement specifically for itself, has pulled out due to the scale of the investment, the long payback period and the cost of energy. Flacks, which until a few days earlier had been insisting it was still in the running, withdrew just hours before the deadline, stating that it would only update its bid after a meeting with Meloni – a meeting that never took place.

This left Jindal – the only one to have been in the running from the start, despite withdrawals and comebacks – and Arvedi, who had never taken part in this tender before. In 2016–2017, in the tender eventually won by ArcelorMittal, the two were allies, alongside Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. Now they are rivals, vying for a steelworks that is no longer what it once was: the blast furnaces have been shut down, and almost all the workers are on furlough. The next step is a meeting at Palazzo Chigi.