(Finance) – The visits of potential new foreign buyers of the former Ilva. The first will be two Indian groups, Vulcan Green Steel – which is part of the Jindal group – e Steel Mont, who will visit the steelworks of Genoa Cornigliano and Novi Ligure before arriving in Taranto on Thursday. Representatives of the Ukrainian steel giant will arrive in the second week of June Metinvest. Among the potential interested parties there would also be Goodbye, but for the moment there are no scheduled visits by the Cremona group. The visits of the steel operators are preliminary to the start of the plant assignment procedures in July.
“By July – the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy had announced on Saturday, Adolfo Ursus – we think we can activate the procedures for assigning the facilities with a program of productive restorationor which provides for the resumption of the second blast furnace in October, the reactivation of the third blast furnace in the middle of next year, so as to add to potential production levels of 6 million tons, the maximum limit that that plant can achieve today. I believe that within a month it will be possible to release the resources in line with the production recovery programs that the commissioners have set themselves.”
The minister then made it known that the OK for the bridging loan has arrived from Brussels 320 million to guarantee employment and production continuity of the plants. “The European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager – declared Urso – has confirmed that European authorization will shortly be granted for the resources of the bridge loan to the former Ilva to safeguard the plants and restore their production activity. On the part of the European Commission there is full consensus.”
The Minister of the Environment and Energy Security spoke about the former Ilva today in Bari, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin. “The themes of decarbonisation of the former Ilva and the revision of the Integrated Environmental Authorization are undoubtedly under our attention. The procedure was started again about ten days ago – underlined the minister – when i commissioners have withdrawn the appeal against the extension provision and the matter is proceeding as usual. The commissioners are moving forward with the production of the industrial plan and we are maintaining all of our objectives. We are the second largest steel producer in Europe and running out of steel, without modern steel, would become a problem. We have to move forward quickly because that is the path forward, carbon neutrality.”