Fiat to reveal contract award next week after closure in Termini Imerese

Last Updated: March 12, 2024

Ex Fiat di Termini Imerese, la settimana prossima l'annuncio dell'affidamento

The next week will see the announcement of the assignee of the spaces of the former Fiat in Termini Imerese. This is suggested by a statement from Minister for Enterprises and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso. “Next week – he said today, March 9 – I think I can make a very positive announcement regarding a 12-year crisis, that of the former Fiat in Termini Imerese.”

On February 28, the deadline for the submission of offers for the former Blutec plant closed. Among these, there was also a symbolic offer of one euro from the group composed of Sciara Holding and Smart City Group, which was delivered to the commissioners before the deadline along with a copy of the payment made for the proposed capital. This offer is not provocative but rather connected to the condition of the site where the plant has been abandoned for fifteen years.

In fact, the offer was resubmitted (after previous submissions) along with an environmental report on the plant. Sciara and Scg are ready to increase the offer for a fair price, but the submission of applications “could not ignore a precise assessment of the interventions, to avoid that the presence of contaminations and deep pollution could dramatically affect the real availability of the asset and therefore incur costs that could jeopardize its use.”

The tender involves the transfer of the plant and industrial area in its current state, but it is difficult to think of being able to enter and start working in a short time given the situation. The report, signed by a specialized company from Siena, lists various pollutants: asbestos (last remediation was in 2000 but there is no available report), which is also present on the roofs of the warehouses but its preservation state couldn’t be verified, paints, exhaust oils still present in containers to be disposed of, sludge in the purifiers for about 10 thousand tons while non-hazardous material purifiers are filled with water and mud.

There are also around 250 machines to be dismantled, filled with lubricant oil (which also needs disposal) that cannot be dismantled with oxyacetylene flames or lifting cranes. Another problem concerns the painting area, which extends over two hectares and is polluted by solvents and paints infiltrated into the soil, or the sea terminal that could be contaminated by heavy metals. In these cases, drilling and sampling would be necessary. Therefore, whoever arrives in Termini Imerese will necessarily have to deal with the remediation costs estimated at least ten million euros. This is why the intervention of public authorities such as Arpa and Sipra is also requested to more accurately quantify the necessary interventions and possible environmental crime risks that could delay the full operability of any new initiatives. Necessary investigations that are therefore requested by the Consortium which submitted the application and decided to also integrate in this new reiterated offer after the extension granted by the Commissioners. “We have decided to integrate the reasons already given in the proposal of last December 4 with the issue of quantifying the costs related to the environmental remediation of the site,” explains Fabio Bartolotti, representative of Sciara Holding. In fact, there is no information or even a rough estimate on the topic in the data room available to the participants in the competition. The other offer that was submitted is that of the group led by entrepreneur Ross Pelligra, owner of Catania Calcio.