Signalling systems, Sirti eyes Genoa

Genoa - The Sirti group - Italy’s well-established provider of telecommunications and energy networks, which emerged at the end of the Great War from an alliance between Vittorio Tedeschi and Pietro Pirelli, and with 4,000 employees on its payroll - is looking to Genoa to reinforce its railway signalling division, with a new operational centre for testing and storage, totalling 1,500 square feet spread across three floors, with an initial 10-member staff. The Sirti SpA group - formerly part of Iri, and, later, of Telecom Italia, after which it underwent three years of restructuring, and, since 2016, 100% owned by the Pillarstone fund, which recently acquired Genoa-based Premuda shipping company - has its research centre specializing in railway signalling systems in Genoa. That facility, in which around 50 people work, is located in the Fiumara area, where the other Italian big sector player, Ansaldo Sts, is also based. The official opening of Sirti’s new centre will take place in the autumn, but news of the project was announced about two weeks ago by José Mir, Head of Innovation and Development at Sirti, during a visit to Genoa by an Economic Delegation from the UAE, organized by the Liguria Region and the Genoa Chamber Of Commerce. Questioned about existing and ongoing projects in Genoa, Mr. Mir made brief mention of “the testing and storage facility at Genoa’s Mele.” The company explained that this facility will receive the materials needed for the construction of the rail signalling systems, and system-testing will be performed, and the facility will also take care of assembling the components of the systems to be shipped to Sirti’s end customers (which in this sector are essentially two: Italy’s state-owned Railway Infrastructure operator RFI, and Pkp-Plk, Poland’s rail infrastructure operator), across various rail lines and stations. The Fiumara facility, on the other hand, will look after R&D, system-design and their implementation, while the new “Mele Centre” will be in charge of testing and putting together the sets of components for the signalling systems. The objective of the investment, according to a message from the company’s Milan headquarters, is to achieve “a significant footprint in the global transport market.”

While Sirti’s move may be seen as a vote of confidence in the growth-prospects for the city, it marks the closing of a troubled chapter in Genoa’s history: the public building being leased by Sirti from Sviluppo Genova is in fact the site of the former Voltri Paper Mill, one of the symbols of a long-beleaguered industrial reconversion of the city. The fact that the new centre is being defined as “the Mele centre” is not wholly incorrect: in fact, the former paper-mill is the last edifice in the municipality of Genoa, and at the very start of the small hinterland hamlet of Mele. The former paper-mill was part of the more than 100 factories of this kind that since the Middle Ages characterized the valleys behind Voltri, a flourishing sector that plummeted during the massive industrialization of the 1960s. The facility remained unused for over 40 years, but in the early 2000s, it was included in the industrial upgrading plans of the city. Inaugurated in 2007, following investments of €5.5 million, it came under public scrutiny on two occasions: first for a fatal accident during the construction work, the second for clouds cast on the conduct by the then executive director of Sviluppo Genova, a public-private company created to handle redevelopment works in the city. The resulting lawsuit, which started in 2009 and led to the resignation of the top management of the company, was later dropped due to procedural errors at the end of 2015, as the court procedures were about to start. On account of the financial crisis of 2008 the former paper-mill was only being used by a fraction of the small-family firms that were its intended tenants. Sirti coming now on the scene will thus result in complete occupancy of the facility, and its relaunch.