Italvolt, founded and led by Lars Carlstrom, the businessman who has been pioneering the automotive industry with over 30 years of experience, announces they have chosen Scarmagno, where the Olivetti industrial area once stood, to build the first Gigafactory in Italy. The factory will be dedicated to the production and storage of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The first stage of the project, envisaging an overall investment of approximately 4 billion Euros, will be completed by Spring of 2024.
The former Olivetti area in Scarmagno, owned by the Monteverdi Fund managed by Prelios SGR, was selected by Italvolt because of its especially favorable technical features and strategic geographical position. Today, the site is a large decommissioned industrial lot that stands on an area of about 1 million square meters, chosen in the past for Olivetti by architects Marco Zanuso and Eduardo Vittoria because of its excellent road and rail connections with Ivrea and with the city of Turin. Another factor that makes Scarmagno ideal for Italvolt’s project is its strong bond with the productive capability of Piedmont, the leading region in Italy in automotive industrial production.
Italvolt’s Gigafactory, with its 300,000 m2 of floor space and an initial capacity of 45 GWh, is an important opportunity for the economic and industrial rebirth of the Scarmagno area and will have a significant impact on the region as well. It is estimated, in fact, that the plant will employ 4,000 workers and will create up to another 15,000 new jobs in allied activities.
The new plant, designed to be easily capable of meeting the growing demand for batteries in Europe that is expected to increase 17 times to approx. 3,600 gigawatt (GWh) by 2030, will be designed by the Architecture Division of Pininfarina, the iconic automotive design brand that has just recently celebrated its 90 years of activity and is already participating in other similarly large projects. With a strong focus on environmental and social impact, Pininfarina intends to develop a new-generation, intelligent and responsible industrial plant by applying DFMA construction methods and by opening the building out to its surroundings, making it merge into the economic and social fabric of the region. Comau, a world leader in industrial automation, with over 45 years of experience and strongly specialized in electrification processes, will be the supplier of innovative solutions, systems and technologies for the gigaplant.
Comau will also see to the construction of the Research & Development center that will be home to academic and industrial partners committed to the development of the most forward-thinking technologies in the electric mobility sector.
Lars Carlstrom, CEO and founder of Italvolt, claimed: “The support of the Piedmont Region, of the local government authorities and of the trade associations in the last eight months has been key to our decision-making process. We are especially happy with the opportunity of starting our project in Piedmont where we have found the perfect combination of factors that I believe are necessary for furthering the transition towards green industrialization: solid industrial tradition and highly specialized technological know-how in the automotive sector. Last but not least, we are honored that we will be able to build our Gigafactory in the Scarmagno area that was once occupied by the Olivetti industrial complex, a company that has written an important page of Italy’s industrial history and that today is still an icon of Made in Italy technology”.
