Former Bekaert plant in Cagliari: the multinational sells up, and a Sardinian company looking for welders retrains the 150 workers instead of laying them off

17 October 2026, 18:22

On Thursday 15 October, at Macchiareddu, in the industrial zone of Cagliari, the plant that for more than fifty years had made steel cord for tyres changed hands. Until the day before it belonged to the Belgian multinational Bekaert. It is now run by Nuova Icom, a Sardinian industrial engineering and steel fabrication company with around 1,100 employees. All 150 workers stay. Lay-offs: none.

Bekaert had put the plant up for sale in September 2025. Among the reasons, as the company told the unions, were transport costs "three times those of competitors" and the price of energy in Sardinia, a heavy burden for anyone who uses a lot of electricity. For someone shipping steel cord to tyre factories, an island is far from everything.

Nuova Icom looks at the sea differently. It builds subsea structures for gas extraction, for clients such as Saipem, Eni, Total and Equinor, and says it is one of roughly fifteen companies in the world that make them. The former Bekaert workers start in its workshops at the Porto Canale, Cagliari's container port, while the plant is prepared for the new production. The investment declared by the company is €40 million.

The most interesting part, though, is something else. Nuova Icom is looking for welders, fabricators and engineering technicians, and is setting up an in-house school to find them in Sardinia. These are the trades missing all over Italy: in May this year companies said that 55.5 per cent of the skilled workers they were seeking were hard to find, rising above 70 among mechanics, maintenance technicians and smiths. Nuova Icom is not waiting for the market to deliver them: it is training them among people who already know what factory life is.

The 150 attend retraining courses before joining the payroll. The Sardinia Region pays for them with a €3 million fund. Those who pass the test are hired. Those who fail take the course again and resit the exam. The plan does not provide for dismissal even for those who get it wrong the first time.

Then there are the new hires, around fifty, taking the workforce above 200. The Ministry of Enterprises, which followed the negotiations, says it wants to bring the same determination to the other crisis tables still open.

So the question, for the Ministry of Enterprises and for the Regions with factories closing: how many workers who are at risk of losing their jobs today could become the welders that companies cannot find?

At Macchiareddu, those who used to make cord for tyres are now learning to build for the seabed.

This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Sole 24 Ore on 16 October 2026.