The former ILVA steelworks at Taranto in Puglia is to get a special commissioner to end its steel monoculture and give many of its 18,000 workers jobs in other fields, Puglia Governor Michele Emiliano said after a draft decarbonisation deal was signed by all parties Tuesday night.
    he goal is to "escape the steel monoculture," he said.
    "This is one of the challenges facing Taranto and the ILVA of the future, following the preliminary agreement reached yesterday by the government with local authorities.
    "The 18,000 workers who work around the steelworks will need to find a place within a broad reconstruction of the economy and life of the city itself," said Emiliano.
    The agreement includes a new commissioner, appointed to oversee the reindustrialization of the vacant areas of the enormous plant, spanning 15 million square meters, twice the size of the city of Taranto, which has suffered higher-than-normal cancer rates due to its toxic emissions.
    The focus also extends beyond the steel industry, but "keeping in mind the principle of enhancing related industries." A call for expressions of interest will explore potential new production investments in the area.

Job protection has been established as a "mandatory principle," alongside the mandatory requirement for full decarbonization, in the new tender to find a buyer for the ADI group in extraordinary administration, published on August 6.
    However, production with electric furnaces requires fewer workers than traditional coal-fired production, and a strategy to protect workers will be necessary.
    The redundancies could be partially offset by the construction of the DRI hub for the pre-reduced heat required to power the new furnaces, but it has not yet been decided whether this will be built in Taranto.
    Without the DRI hub, according to estimates by the FIM CISL trade union, over 7,000 jobs would be at risk.
    The verdict has been postponed until after September 15, when the deadline for potential investors to submit binding offers is set.
    At that point, a new meeting will assess whether the main project proposed by Business and Made in Italy (MIMIT) Minister Adolfo Urso, with three electric furnaces, four DRI plants, and an equal number of CO2 capture and storage facilities, can be realized in Taranto, even without the regasification vessel opposed by Mayor Piero Bitetti.
    A new option put forward by the City Council—which, according to sources familiar with the matter, could interest investors such as the Indian group Jindal—envisions three electric furnaces and a single DRI plant in Taranto.
    Urso's secondary option, meanwhile, is limited to the three electric furnaces in Taranto.

Gioia Tauro is also considered for the DRI hub.
    Jindal may also be willing to acquire only the plants in Southern Italy, assuming the Southern and Northern plants are sold separately.
    In the tender process, government sources emphasize, the best offer in terms of employment and production for all the facilities will be preferred, whether sold together or separately.
    The latest meeting at MIMIT also marked a change in management of DRI d'Italia, a company wholly owned by Invitalia, founded to build pre-reduced waste production plants and financed with €1 billion in public resources, initially from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), then transferred to development and cohesion funds.
    The meeting was attended by new company leaders: President Cesare Pozzi and CEO Ferruccio Ferranti, appointed after the Council of State annulled the tender for the DRI plant in Taranto, which was to be hydrogen-powered.
   

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