Italian bus industry, why it doesn’t restart despite the push from Leonardo and Invitalia-Corriere.it

The orders are there, the market as well, the public control, entrusted to two major investees, Leonardo and Invitalia, should constitute a granite certainty. Instead, the story of Industria Italiana Bus, the company that in 2019 united Irisbus of Flumeri (Avellino) and BredaMenarinibus of Bologna into a single destiny, producing buses and employing over 400 workers, yet another Italian story one step away from bankruptcy. A sea of ​​assigned orders: a thousand buses booked between central administration and municipalities. In stock, 29 million euros of components, but the wrong ones. Why — how he reconstructed The paper — to complete the buses, other pieces would be needed that have not been bought because the liquidity has run out. Nor can there be any at this point, because the banks are no longer willing to lend. Thus there are buses that are 90% ready that cannot be completed, suppliers that no longer ship goods or do maintenance on the vehicles. And workers who are no longer able to work. Result: losses of 47.7 million in 2022 and a board of directors who fled on 10 June.

The ministry has received expressions of interest for Caetano Bus (Toyota group) to join the company, the Bolognese Sira Group of Valerio Grupponi, who had already taken an interest years ago, and the Seri Industries group from Caserta. Minister Adolfo Urso made no secret of his disappointment about the choice made by his predecessor Luigi di Maio to make the two companies public. But in the meantime the Ministry of Enterprise had to appoint a third managing director: Giancarlo Schisano. This name does not come new to veterans of public holdings: from Montedison to the Fs, from MetroNapoli to Alitalia, from AirOne to Leonardo, Schisano was above all a flight manager. In Alitalia he worked for twelve years (until he held the role of general manager), going through three bankruptcies. But this shouldn’t alarm the workers of Iia: only the operational part of the airline has always been in Schisano’s care, perhaps the only one that has never stopped working. Who knows if he just can’t turn this into a success story.