According to reports from local labor unions, Mr Bruno Ferrante president of Taranto based Italian steel producer ILVA has stated that the company has stockpiled about 1 million tonnes of slabs in order to ensure the continuing operation of the company's finishing lines in the context of the recent order by the court of Taranto for the total shutdown of ILVA's upstream production facilities. In fact, ILVA's flat steel rolling mills and pipe mills do not fall within the scope of the court of Taranto's decisions targeting pollution at ILVA.

In addition, as reported by the labor unions, Mr Ferrante stated that the coiling line No 1, which had been idle since June 10th 2012, restarted production during the past week. He told labor union officials that ILVA is exploiting 60 percent of its overall production capacity at present and that no facilities have been shut down so far. In this context, ILVA wants to avoid any recourse to social security measures such as redundancy payments.

Meanwhile, the situation could worsen if the technicians nominated by the court of Taranto opt to halt core production facilities for a long period as, in that case, ILVA would find very difficult to place workers in employment at other facilities at the company.

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