Piemonte
Piemonte: competitive edge with a solid background
Surface: 25,293 km2
Population: 4.3 millions
GNP: 118 billion euro
GDP per capita: 27,000 euros
Piemonte is the largest region of continental Italy, with a territorial extension like Denmark and a population of over 4 million inhabitants, comparable to that of Norway. Modern and lively, thanks to its geographical position Piemonte is a main gateway to the European market. It is one of the most industrialized regions of the Country and can offer to the international markets a wide range of capabilities and a unique ensemble of manufacturing variety.
This is an area of excellence with approximately 400,000 enterprises (out of 5 million all over Italy) organized in extremely innovative, flexible and efficient clusters, in most sectors covering the complete production cycle. The best example is provided by the automotive industry, other clusters concern mechanics, agriculture and food, textiles, clothing, jewellery, eco-industry, aerospace and writing.
Piemonte annually exports goods worth 29.5 billion Euro. Its most important trade partner is undoubtedly the European Union, which absorbs 63% of its exports and the same percentage of its imports. The region's GDP pro capite is approximately 27,000 Euros.
The central role of the whole region is also clearly shown by the growing interest of foreign industrial investors. More than 500 foreign businesses in the manufacturing, service and commerce sectors, have already made Piemonte the base for development in Italy and Europe. These include: Jac, AE Goetze, Alstom, Contitech, Dayco, Dea Brown and Sharpe, Eaton, Federal Mogul, Irci, Kimberly Clark, Lear Corporation, L'Oreal, Magna and Motorola.
Piemonte invests 1.42 billions in research and development, which is strongly supported by an extremely dynamic local network of more than 200 Research Centers of international standing, such as the ones run by Fiat (for automotive), GME Powertrain, Telecom Italia (for telecommunication), RAI (for broadcasting) and Motorola EMEA (for mobile phone systems).
In addition, the vocation for innovation and the receptivity of the whole territory make Piemonte a promising and competitive area in terms of professional training and in the cultural and intellectual environment.
Two are the leading university institutions in Piemonte: the University of Turin, with more than 65,000 students, 1,200 lecturers and 700 researchers, 12 faculties and 55 departments � and the Polytechnic of Turin, top ranking for technical-scientific training and research in Italy and Europe, with a high level of integration with the business system.
Automotive leading companies from Piemonte
The Italian car industry has its roots in Torino and Piemonte, an area boasting a rich heritage of expertise in manufacturing, excellent in terms of inventiveness, skill, love for the product and technical/design quality.
The Piemonte area offers a widespread network of outstanding production facilities diversified into various sectors (styling, design, prototyping, automation, components, mass production and niche production) with an outstanding unique feature: the entire planning and production cycle is all concentrated in the same area.
The tradition of "knowing how to make cars" has always kept up with the times; today a considerable number of companies that produce for the car industry are organised into groups, able to carry out the most complex and delicate jobs along with the lean production chain. Around 27% of the companies in the "car system" are part of organised structures, equally divided between international groups/corporations and local SME groups. System consolidation and partial formation into enterprise groups is rather recent and has begun after 1990.
The players of the Piemonte automotive stage
The data gathered by the Survey Centre (Osservatorio) promoted by the Torino Chamber of Commerce to overview the whole gamut of the Italian automotive industry show that its Piemonte component consists of more than 950 joint stock companies employing about 98,000 persons. About 30 are international original equipment manufacturers that supply systems and modules, while 130 specialise in engineering and design products and services. Four hundred or more offer innovative products generated by investment of 3 to 4% of their turnover in research and the fruit of collaboration with the Torino Polytechnic, one of Italy's front-runner universities, whose top-flight lecturers and readiness to talk things over with local enterprises lie behind the conclusion of 700 contracts a year.
The foreign system and module designers who came to Piemonte to supply the Fiat Group are now taking advantage of this manufacturing capacity to sell abroad. A survey conducted by the Torino Chamber of Commerce in April 2006 showed that 75% of the system designers earn more than one-third of their income abroad.
Trading abroad, indeed, is a must for the system as a whole: two-thirds of the companies chalk up more than 35% of their sales outside Italy. Other European countries, of course, are still an attractive option. Even so, more than half of Piemonte's exporters have opened one or more business channels, both in regularly importing nations, such as the US and Japan, and the emerging economies, especially China.
Comparison with the rest of Italy, too, shows that firms based in Piemonte are the most active in the search for new markets and the location of their manufacturing facilities in other countries.
Excellent production enterprises and car research centres
Automotive enterprises are responsible for more than 50% of the European patents granted to inventors in Piemonte and the Fiat Research Centre (FRC) is where more than 900 engineers and researchers carry the sector forwards.
In fact, for some time now the FRC has been more than a "purely Piemonte research centre", carrying out various forms of research with all the large European groups and being a leading contractor in the European Union within the VI Framework Programme.
Despite the write-off of its alliance with Fiat, General Motors, the world's No.1 car sales leader in 2005, not surprisingly decided to choose Torino as the home of its own diesel engines and transmissions research centre, with a staff of more than 300 engineers.