The Industrial Geography of Italy by Russell King

Author:Russell King [King, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138854437
Google: cLNNvgAACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-02-22T05:58:49+00:00

The Role of State Holding Companies in Metallurgy, Engineering and Regional Development

Like most other major branches of industry, metallurgy and engineering are dominated by big northern firms, some of them members of IRI. Table 7.3 shows the extent to which the state participates in the three main branches of metallurgy (mainly iron and steel), engineering (heavy, mechanical and electrical engineering, but excluding vehicles), and vehicles. In 1970 84 per cent of IRI’s total manufacturing sales were in the fields of steel, heavy engineering and shipbuilding. IRI produced 94 per cent of Italy’s pig iron, 66 per cent of its steel and accounted for 80 per cent of shipbuilding capacity.

Several IRI finanziarie are important in the metallurgical and heavy engineering industries. Finsider (founded in 1937) operates in iron and steel, controlling the main companies of Italsider, Terni and Dalmine. Finmeccanica (1947) is concerned mainly with automobile, electro-mechanical, railway engineering and machine tool production; here the most important concerns are Alfa Romeo (cars), Ansaldo (electro-mechanical branch) and Breda (thermo-mechanical). Fincantieri (1959) controls all the state interests in shipbuilding.

The other main state holding company of relevance to the industries considered in this chapter is EFIM, formed in 1962 to support mechanical engineering. The nucleus of EFIM is the Breda heavy engineering concern; 72 per cent of EFIM’s turnover is railway rolling-stock, shipbuilding equipment, cranes, helicopters, light aircraft, engines of various kinds, motorcycles and air conditioning plant. EFIM also controls aluminium processing, including the two main plants (Alsar and Eurallumina) in Sardinia, as well as moving into certain non-engineering activities such as foodstuffs, paper, glass and rubber.6

Table 7.3: Share of Public Enterprise in Metallurgy, Engineering and Vehicles as a Percentage of National Totals, 1971

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