In Turin, today, Lavazza coffee produces more innovation than Stellantis’ car. And it is certainly not good news for a city that aims to become a hub of knowledge and technology. In 2023 in Piedmont fell by 9.4% (for a total of 441 units) the patent application submitted to the Epo, the European office that protects industrial property. And Turin it fell to 69th place among the cities of the Old Continent by number of patents, 175 registered last year.
The sudden slowdown, after years of growth in patents and innovation, is attributable to the broken down automotive engine. Suffice it to say that Stellantis has registered just 166 European patents in Italy and just 3 in Turin, surpassed by Lavazza which, despite the Food & Beverage sector requiring less technology than cars, has registered eleven.
Stellantis has not stopped investing in hitech. Indeed, it is the four-wheel players that have invested the most in the double transition, ecological and digital. But patent applications today leave from other cities and then land at the offices of the European Patent Office. TO Paris for example Stellantis broke every record: more than 1,500 patentsconfirming itself as the most innovative company in France, ahead of the volumes of patents produced by Safran’s defense industry and three times as many as those registered by competitor Renault.
The place of registration of a product or process technology does not necessarily correspond to the place where research and development is carried out.
And Turin itself has benefited from the presence of large law firms in the patent sector, from Jacobacci to Cake, to often appear in the high ranking of the number of patents, in Italy second only to Milan. And it is no coincidence that the city aspired to host a headquarters of the EU Patent Court which instead, during the Appendino Council, was assigned to Milan.
However, despite everything, it strikes the innovative collapse in Turin of the industrial galaxy attributable to Exor. The decline in patent applications from the Piedmont region at EPO in 2023 does not only concern Stellantis which dropped to just three patents in one year. But it is mainly due to Cnh Industrialthe agricultural machinery giant with over 25 billion in revenues and 27% controlled by Exor, which presented 94 applications from Piedmont in 2022 and only 39 in 2023. In total, CNH Industrial, at the wheel of which the CEO will be Marx Gerritformer CEO of Iveco, who deposited much less in 2023 than in 2022 (-36%).
Iveco continues to produce and record innovation in the city with its trucks and commercial vehicles. In the ranking of the Top 10 EPO patent applicants from Italy, we find in third position the historic Turin-based multinational Iveco Group, which alone has submitted 33 patent applications from Piedmont.
Coffee, chemistry and aerospace are therefore rising in the region as sectors producing innovation. In the ranking of the five companies that have registered the most patents a Monkwhere Epo is based, in addition to CNH and Iveco, there is also the green chemistry of Novamont of Catia Bastioli (in the orbit of Eni), the defense and aerospace of Microtecnica (now of Collins Aerospace but which could be acquired by the French of Safran) and finally by Lavazza.
The Lavazza family brand it is the only 100% Turin brand that is growing also in the innovation ranking and is growing externally. The group led by Antonio Baravalle and chaired by Giuseppe Lavazza, with approximately 3.1 billion in revenues (increasing by 13% compared to 2022) has just acquired the coffee machines of the Ivs group, through the vehicle Torino 1895 Investment, launching a Takeover bid at the price of 7.15 euros per share. So in the city coffee is stronger than the car also in terms of innovation.
