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“Innovative, technological, sustainable, inclusive, European”. In a word: “Industrial”. This is it province of Varese who imagines for the future the president of Confindustria Varese, Roberto Grassi.
Qualifying adjectives of a territory with which he concluded his report toGeneral Assembly 2024 of the employers’ association which was held in the headquarters of MV Agusta Motor of Schiranna, with the participation also of the President of Confindustria, Emanuele Orsini.
Innovation as a strategic driver of development
At the center of the 2024 assembly work, innovation, but above all, the how build a new competitiveness for businesses. Starting from the implementation, with concrete actions, of Strategic Plan #Varese2050.
«We are in the execution phase – specified President Grassi – Immediately after the presentation of the Plan to the 2022 General Assembly, we started concrete projects. We are carrying out actions to support production chains, startups, ESG issues and the construction of a new innovation ecosystem.”
Four construction sites to build a future of growth for the area, inaugurated also with a promise: «New ideas and new technologies generate new investments, increase the productivity of all of us and the competitiveness of the system. We are so aware of this that the construction of an ecosystem of innovation and startup development, starting from our territorial industrial clusters, has become the center of the competitive renewal action that we have undertaken with the #Varese2050 Strategic Plan. We need a business and innovation accelerator. A commitment that, as Confindustria Varese, we have made towards the territory and which we are respecting with the Mill project which will be built alongside LIUC – Cattaneo University”.
Update on Mill
A project that of Mill (Manufacturing, Innovation, Learning, Logistics) which after having passed the authorization phase, has now entered the more concrete and planning phase: «We launched a beauty contest in which several Italian architecture firms participated. The proposals have already all been delivered to us. In the next few weeks we will select them and by the end of the month we will have the architectural firm that will design the construction site. But Mill is not just an infrastructure – Grassi was keen to underline – The construction site that we are going to open in Castellanza will serve to build the hardware whose software has already started working. While we design and build the walls of Mill, we fill the services and the with content new representative action which will have their headquarters and development there. This is how the alliances with LIUC, Mill’s natural co-partner, were further strengthened. At the same time we are widening the links of a network of collaborations which, in the vision of the future, will lead us to broaden and multiply the possibilities for action. Starting from the ITS and then arriving at the university, research and incubation system. This is how the projects with ComoNext, with InnoVits, with Sodalitas, with Fondazione Ergo were born. Thanks to Confindustria Bergamo we have started contacts with Kilometro Rosso and other joint labs, such as those created within the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. Last, in chronological order, is the important agreement that we have signed with the Polytechnic of Milan through PoliHub”.
Open innovation, startups and new technologies
The objectives of these collaborations are those of broaden the boundaries of comparison, scout new technologiestrace the path on what is defined open innovation: «This is why we have started a process that will start this year on an experimental basis for metalworking companies, and which we already do in part for other sectors, divided into several phases: the exploration of opportunities through the technological missions of Open Mind with Confindustria Bergamo and Confindustria Emilia Centro; training in innovation processes; the creation of communities of innovators; the contamination of the production system with the world of startups. Those born in the area are too few – remarked Grassi – We must attract more, we must ensure that our young people have the courage to develop their ideas, we must look for deep technology startups that offer not only app ideas, but new manufacturing ideas for existing industrial supply chains and bring them here. There are so many opportunities today to bring this technological contamination to life.”
«Let’s think about the application areas of Artificial Intelligence, cyber security, the digitalisation of processes and products, research into new generation materials, bioprinting, opportunities linked to energy (such as those on hydrogen), motoring, new generation batteries, to carbon capture, to biotech – adds the president – In order for these technological opportunities to be seized and implemented effectively in the production system, we have also reread our membership base, clustering it by technological skills, outlet markets and supply chains. All with the aim of collect homogeneous needs and outline new collaboration systems».
The dialogue with the Jrc
At the center of the meeting of Varese companies is also the need to look at Europe and the territory at the same time. «Varese can play a winning card in this regard that other economic and production systems do not have. An example is the presence in Ispra of Joint Research Center, the only one in Italy and the largest in Europe – Grassi was keen to highlight –. As Confindustria Varese, in the last year, we have begun to deal more intensely with the Jrc. The concrete demonstration of a closer integration of the activities of the Ispra laboratories with the manufacturing context of the territory is the recent renewal of the Collaboration Agreement between our LIUC – Cattaneo University and the Jrc. An agreement with the aim of guide European policies on crucial issues such as sustainability, digital and industrial transformation, healthcare”.
The objective is to «lead the way for a further step forward: the involvement of our entire Confindustria system of representation at a national level». According to Grassi, thecontribution to the dialogue with the JRC that all of Confindustria could guarantee is that of field experiences, data and evolutions of the industrial competitive context in which companies are protagonists and which they could share with European researchers: «A structured collaboration between Jrc and Confindustria, a topic on which we have already begun to discuss with the new president Emanuele Orsini, he could act as hinge between research, politics and business. If the European decision-making model is ‘Science for policy’, activating, as a Confindustria System, a dialogue with the fundamental research activities of the Ispra laboratories is not only far-sighted, but necessary”.
Transition 5.0 and tax wedge
In President Grassi’s report, there was no shortage of messages to national politics: «The Government Transition Plan 5.0 – stated the president of Confindustria Varese – it must be rethought. It doesn’t work the way it was set up. With current time horizons it does not support development of the industrial system. We waited at least six months for the implementing decrees, which are only now starting to come out, indicating how to access incentives for investments that we should conclude by 31 December 2025. Not only that we have wasted too much timebut it is also clear that in this way we will only be able to give rise, at most, to a modernization of our factories. We need much more. We need to grow our productivity. And to achieve this we need structural measures that have a five-year vision. This is how jobs are created, not with bonuses. We are not asking for help or assistance. We ask for a long-term country strategy». Finally, the request «to be able to guarantee a quality of life that also passes through a adequate level of net wages». Grassi was clear on this: «Let’s go back to asking for a structural cut in the tax wedge».
«Our province is at the forefront and is an engine for Lombardy and for Italy, with many stories of successful businesses that deserve to be protected and valorised. We work for this, together with the trade associations”, declared the president of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontanaspeaking at the annual meeting of Confindustria Varese.
«The choice to hold the meeting at the Mv Agusta Motor headquarters – continued Fontana – has a particular meaning that I personally share: we are on the side of manufacturing and innovation. Region supports a Lombard production system which is more and more at the top of Europe, attractor of investments and able to compete and win competitions on a global level. These are facts that should be highlighted with pride: our will is to move forward on this path.”
Fontana then focused on the broader issue of the European Union: «In Europe we are witnessing many equivocal responses and an overly ideological approach to the issue of sustainability: certain choices risk upsetting entire economic realities, but the vote has shown that citizens Europeans do not so agree on the excessive ideologicalization of one battlethat for greater sustainabilitywhich we all believe in but which must be conducted with realism and common sense».
