Silk Faw, last round to restart Saving hanging on Chinese partners

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«We still have about thirty employees at work, who we are protecting with a solidarity contract, the program agreement with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia is still active and there is a gentleman’s agreement with the owners of the Gavassa land on which to build the factory. There is a lack of financial resources, because the war has hindered the disinvestment of investments by the funds involved, but there will soon be news. In about ten days we will be ready to spread them».

The new summit

Giovanni Lamorte, who took over the reins of Silk Sports Car Company (formerly Silk-Faw) after the death of CEO Katia Bassi last November 26th, thus responds to the unanimous chorus in the motor valley which also considers Reggio Emilia as deceased the project of the large electric hypercar factory, announced with great fanfare in the spring of 2020 and remained only on paper. However, in about ten days – this could be the news – a flesh-and-blood delegation of representatives of Xi Jinping’s government which controls Faw, the oldest and largest automotive group, should arrive from China. The credible subject who, with a 15% minority stake, had set up the joint venture three years ago with the American financier Jonathan Crane, proponent of the mammoth plan of hundreds of millions of euros in investments and a thousand direct jobs to develop e- Hongqi brand luxury car.

Lamorte does not explicitly mention either Faw or the automotive industry, but announces that “the Chinese are planning a visit to Italy, after two years of the pandemic and videoconferencing, now that the government has unblocked entry and exit visas”. It would be the turning point and an opportunity to talk about «the innovations we are working on, but which I will announce after the fact so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past – remarked the CEO -. My goal as head of the business is to keep it going and continue to do whatever it takes to be ready to go when the funding arrives. In America it doesn’t work like it does in Italy, where you draw up a loan agreement, set the date and plan. Overseas investors marry a plan, sign it and when the money arrives they start it, but they move the capital only when they make money and the Russo-Ukrainian war has blocked everything ».

The land of Gavassa

To intrigue is the fact that the sector of activity in which Silk Sports Car Company Srl appears to operate, from the Chamber of Commerce register, is “Biotechnology and life sciences”, but nothing is known about who is there and with what shares behind Silk- Faw Automotive Group Holdings Limited based in the Caymans, final reference shareholder after summer 2022, a period in which the failed deed for the purchase of the land behind the Mediopadana station exposed the inconsistency of Crane’s commitments. «What is certain – underlines the mayor of Reggio Emilia, Luca Vecchi – is that the ambitious start-up, because this is in fact Silk Sports Car, has not yet benefited from public aid or urban planning changes. 80% of the Gavassa land of interest to investors was already for production use, we had started the urban variant for the residual agricultural share, necessary to reach the 320,000 m2 of industrial area required, but as soon as we solved the difficulties we stopped everything . In the abstract it is true that the project is still in the field, but in fact it has been removed from the city’s agenda. We continue to maintain relations with top management to be sure of obligations towards employees and it is clear that should there be a relaunch of private initiative, we will act accordingly. However, I think that now the financial resources were arriving, there is a greater problem of credibility so compromised with the stakeholders as to make it impossible to take off».

End of run fears

Even Fabio Storchi, former president of the Reggio Emilia industrialists and of Federmeccanica, a great supporter of the dream of the electric car factory in Reggio Emilia, is now disillusioned: «It would have given impetus to our area and related industries in a historic moment in which the electric the industrial future of Europe is at stake, but I no longer believe in it. I understand that Kane has made a financial effort to pay the suppliers but a project of this magnitude requires the intervention of international funds”.