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‘Made in Italy’ gets €260m to go global

The government on Thursday approved a plan to invest €260 million to promote Italian goods and services worldwide in an attempt to boost exports and attract more investment in the country.

Published: 27 February 2015 17:04 CET

'Made in Italy' gets €260m to go global

Made in Italy photo: Shutterstock

Italy’s minister for economic development, Federica Guidi, on Thursday signed the implementation decree for the investment plan.

The principal aim of the decree is to increase Made in Italy exports by €50 billion over a period of three years, business daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported.

It aims to attract €20 billion in foreign investment as well as target the emerging markets’ middle class.

The government also hopes to increase the number of exporting companies in Italy by around 20,000. In recent years around 200,000 Italian firms operate abroad. The decree must now be reviewed by the Supreme Audit Court.

The news comes after a Milan consultancy firm found that several Italian luxury brands – including Tod’s leather goods, cashmere king Brunello Cucinelli and eyewear giant Luxottica – posted positive revenue growth, ranging from slight to substantial, from worldwide sales in the first nine months of 2014.

According to a forecast from the European Commission (EC) earlier this month, Italy's economy is set for a gradual recovery this year as exports grow and households have more money to spend due to lower energy bills.

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Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa.

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology.

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces.

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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