Sitting at a table in a meeting room decorated with paintings depicting partridges and other birds shot down in mid-flight by invisible cannons, Franco Gussalli Beretta recognizes it: concern looms over the industrious province of Brescia, in Lombardy, where his dynasty reigns. for fifteen generations. President of the armed group that bears his name, he also heads the powerful local branch of Confindustria, the Italian employers’ organization.
“In the 1980s and 1990s, globalization and competition from countries with low labor costs eradicated our Brescia textile industry. Then the kitchenware sector suffered enormously. Low added value industries have disappeared, other companies have managed to maintain their position by rising to a very high level.says the industrialist, whose group recorded a turnover of 1.4 billion euros in 2022. Today, our province is on the brink of a new crisis, with similar implications. »
In fact, bad winds are blowing in this territory located just a stone’s throw from the Swiss border, which concentrates the singularities and excellences of Europe’s third industrial power. Because Germany is doing badly. This large market, which extends beyond the nearby Alps and to which the export economy of the province of Brescia is closely linked, is no longer a safe value. Economically it is stagnant. And his political future is full of uncertainties.
Stall
Automotive equipment manufacturers in the Brescia region, at the forefront of the local industry and inserted in the value chain of large German manufacturers, are concerned about their decline, although they expect to be more generally affected by the transition to the electrical. At the national level, the automotive sector fell 26.1% between July 2023 and July 2024, returning to the 2013 level, according to Confindustria figures, while equipment manufacturers suffered a contraction of 21.7%.
“The most dynamic dimension of Italian industry embodied in Brescia is represented by medium-sized family businesses. They are mainly active in the business to businesswith a very high degree of specialization, and are very internationalized”explains Andrea Colli, professor of economic history at Bocconi University in Milan. With 1.62 million inhabitants and a gross domestic product of 45.5 billion euros, the province, where we like to present ourselves as a small state directly connected to the economies of northern Europe and little linked to Rome, registered 10, 2 billion positive trade balance in 2023. With 13,000 manufacturing companies, the territory ranks fourth among industrial provinces after Milan, Rome and Turin, much more populated metropolises.
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