The Centrale del latte di Alessandria e Asti has reached the end of the line: «Having taken note of the lack of formal binding proposals for the acquisition of the company, the board of directors has decided to interrupt the activity compatibly with the commercial commitments made and with the disposal of stocks of products in the warehouse, as the conditions for business continuity no longer exist”. The note from the Board of Directors concludes as follows: «The choice of procedure was the one that best protected the search for safeguarding jobs and business continuity.
While waiting for the precise scenario to be defined, the Board of Directors will introduce all the necessary actions in the interests of employees and the company.” However, the crisis and now the liquidation do not arrive suddenly. The high price that the forty-eight employees and the entire milk supply chain risk paying is the result of years of choices (and non-choices) which aimed to favor a local industrial vision, which unfortunately was however not able to stay on the market. And the post-pandemic period has made the situation worse. Consumer behavior has changed, bars and restaurants have undergone profound upheavals, and the costs of the internal logistics chain have increased. If Centrale first took over that of Viareggio and then that of Savona, achieving a positive result again in 2018, afterwards there was a progressive collapse.
Having even reached twenty-five million euros in turnover did not mean much because the economic and financial margins were extremely reduced due to inflation and the decrease in sales. While the fresh milk market is in constant difficulty, the long-life milk market is growing. Being equipped and competitive has always been very difficult and the latest investment to try to conquer some market share and enter large-scale distribution, even with a marginal position, is that of the microfiltration plant with a production capacity of three million liters per day. This year wasn’t enough. It became operational too late due to repeated technical difficulties.
The capital increase then failed in February. In fact, none of the shareholders agreed to the assembly’s proposal: two million euros to save the company. Thus the procedure for the negotiated settlement of the crisis was opened with the aim of looking for a strategic partner who could enter into the shareholding structure for the relaunch of the Centrale del latte di Alessandria and Asti. Thus the latest stalemate seems destined to close the history of Alexandrian milk forever.
But in the background remains the decision of Alexandrian politics to oppose the purchase proposal put forward a few years ago by the Centrale del Latte d’Italia. The municipal administration, despite holding a share of ten percent of the capital at the time (which later fell to 6.9 percent), effectively imposed an operational choice in the name of preserving the Alexandrian nature of the company. An Alexandrian nature that immediately collided with the market, the economy, the pandemic. The impossibility of achieving economies of scale, of reducing logistics costs, the fragmentation of the points of sale served (many retail shops, little large-scale distribution), the change in consumer habits has gradually crumbled an industrial tradition that was first order, like the quality of the product itself.
The numbers tell it all: the Centrale del Latte of Alessandria and Asti “collects, processes and markets almost 15 million liters of milk per year” we read on the website. The Centrale del Latte d’Italia Spa group (which also includes the Centrale del latte di Torino) is the third Italian hub in the milk and derivatives sector (it is present in Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Veneto, Tuscany and Campania ), processes 210 million liters of milk per year, employs 620 people, serves 4,200 large-scale retail outlets and 16,536 normal trade outlets (mainly retail). The company, listed on the Star segment of the Italian Stock Exchange, recorded a turnover of 169.8 million euros in 2023, with an increase of 17.1 percent compared to 145 million in 2022.
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