Exor, Stellantis and the somersaults of Repubblica
Repubblica criticizes Italy for the few subsidies and the lack of a serious industrial policy on microchips and batteries. And Stellantis, controlled by the same group behind the newspaper, is targeting France and Germany…
While Carlo Calenda and various analysts question Stellantis' investments in Italy , la Repubblica – a newspaper owned by Exor , the holding of the Agnelli-Elkann family which also controls the car manufacturer – shifts attention to the subsidies offered by states to the automotive sector .
WHAT REPUBBLICA WRITE ABOUT THE EUROPEAN RACE FOR SUBSIDIES
In an article published today in the Affari & Finanza insert of the newspaper directed by Maurizio Molinari and dedicated to the return of industrial policy on critical technologies for energy and digital, the newspaper in fact criticizes the poor economic incentives allocated by our country (a unlike Germany and France, in particular) and the absence of planning on the part of the current and previous governments.
“What penalizes our country,” writes Repubblica , “is Europe's choice not to allocate common resources, but rather to limit itself to widening the scope of state aid, rewarding those who have room in their budgets to allocate the most generous incentives. Not us."
GERMANY AND FRANCE DOMINATE STATE AID
Of the 672 billion euros in state aid that the European Commission approved in 2022, 77 percent came from just two countries: 53 percent from Germany and 24 percent from France; Italy was worth only 7 percent. The position of Giorgia Meloni's executive is that the easing of community legislation on state aid has the effect of putting Italian companies at a competitive disadvantage compared to German and French companies, which can count on the support of governments with greater spending possibilities.
WHERE MICROCHIPS GO
On microchips, essential components for both the digital and ecological transition (they are necessary for electric vehicles), Germany has allocated subsidies for 20 billion euros: 10 billion went to the American Intel for a manufacturing plant in Magdeburg, while the Taiwanese TSMC (joined by Bosch, Infineon and NXP) obtained 5 billion for a factory in Dresden .
Intel plans to invest $4.6 billion in a semiconductor testing factory in Poland, near Wroclaw, a location also chosen for its proximity to the German factory. Therefore, chip production will go to Germany, testing to Poland and – in theory – packaging, the last link in the value chain, to Italy. The company should in fact invest 4.5 billion for a packaging structure in Vigasio: there has been talk about it for some time , but there is nothing concrete yet.
The Meloni government would like to stimulate the development of an Italian semiconductor supply chain through a "Chips Act" based on the European model , which however has not yet been well defined. STMicroelectronics , an Italian-French electronics company owned by the Ministry of Economy, will invest 730 million euros in Catania (public aid amounts to 292 million), but 7.4 billion in Crolles, France (with a subsidy of 2 .9 billion).
WHERE THE BATTERIES GO AND WHAT STELLANTIS DOES
On batteries, however, a fundamental technology for powering electric vehicles and for storing renewable energy, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence projections say that by 2030 Germany will have a production capacity of 325 gigawatt hours and France of 162 GWh. Hungary, chosen by the Chinese CATL , should reach 200 GWh. While Italy could stop at just 40 GWh.
While President Emmanuel Macron is pushing ahead with his plan to transform the Dunkirk area , a now impoverished former mining center in northern France, into an industrial hub for batteries, Italy could find itself with just one gigafactory by 2030 (this is what the battery factories are called): that of ACC, the joint venture between Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies, in Termoli. But Stellantis still loves France and Germany more than Italy, as Startmag reported , given the rich plans for batteries in Douvrin (northern France) and Kaiserslautern (southwestern Germany).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/italia-investimenti-sussidi-microchip-batterie/ on Mon, 02 Oct 2023 07:52:35 +0000.