Indesit Company’s top management met with government and the trade unions at the Ministry of Economic Development to verify the feasibility of an agreement over a re-organization plan designed to recover competitiveness and the solutions proposed to that end. At the close of the meeting attended by representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development and the regional administrations of Le Marche and Campania, it was possible, after six months of talks, to reach a preliminary agreement with the workers’ representatives over the re-organization plan. Significantly improved a number of times, it envisages investments of €83m and more higher value added production in Italy and definitively excludes all options entailing mandatory redundancies thanks to appropriate use of welfare support. There are also provisions for severance incentives for employees applying for them and a commitment on the part of the Company not to use mandatory redundancies till 2018. The plan provides for an almost total renewal of the range of higher value added products made in Italy in terms of both performance and competitiveness, while the Group’s three Italian industrial clusters will be redesigned and restructured over the period 2014 to 2016. The Fabriano (Ancona) site will be the exclusive production centre for high innovation content built-in ovens (also producing those now made in Poland), small ovens (now made in Spain) and special cooking products. The Comunanza (Ascoli Piceno) plant will be the centre of innovation and production for high-end front-loading washing machines. The Caserta facility, lastly, will be the exclusive centre for the production of built-in fridges with high innovation content (also producing those now made in Turkey) and built-in gas hobs (currently produced in Fabriano and part of which originally scheduled for production in Poland). In addition to the consolidation in Italy of the already existing higher value added production, new production will thus be transferred to the Italian sites from Poland, Spain and Turkey, while no longer sustainable low-end production will be relocated from Italy to the countries with the most favourable costs (mainly in Eastern Europe). The use of social measures, made possible by the agreement between the parties and subject to the approval of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, will enable production to be re-organized whilst protecting the people involved and without losing professional know-how in view of the benefits expected of the investments and the foreseeable recovery of the markets.
