For some inner areas the State expects irreversible depopulation. In Meduno a company is investing €50 million and looking for 200 people

31 October 2026, 15:53

On 27 October the Roncadin group, which makes frozen pizzas, announced that it will enlarge its factory in Meduno, a town at the foot of the Pordenone Prealps, with €50 million and, when fully operational, about 200 jobs. The news matters above all for the place where it happens.

That town, for the State, is an inner area: the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region counts it among the municipalities of the Dolomiti Friulane, one of the territories far from hospitals, secondary schools and railway stations, where the population is shrinking and ageing. In Italy 3,834 municipalities are classified this way, almost half of the total, and around 13 million people live in them. In ten years, from 2014 to 2024, they lost almost 700,000 residents, and Istat estimates that in twenty years eight municipalities out of ten will be in decline.

For these territories the State has a National Strategic Plan covering the years 2021 to 2027, but it only approved it in 2025, when four of those seven years had already gone by. Under its fourth objective the document provides, for areas where the inhabitants are now few and elderly, for «support along a path of irreversible depopulation»: those areas, the plan says, cannot set themselves the goal of reversing the trend, and must be assisted through a decline that is now chronic. Mayors, regional councillors and bishops protested.

Meanwhile a family business whose plants have been almost saturated by European demand has chosen to enlarge its factory in that valley. In a mountain village every extra job is a family that can stay, and perhaps another that arrives. The State has counted those who will leave. The company has counted those who need to arrive.

And so, while in a State document some inner areas are already given up for lost, in Meduno a new line is nearing completion.

This article was prompted by a news item published in il Nord Est on 27 October 2026.