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Last amendment: > on 2026-02-06.
Invitalia (Italy's national investment-promotion and industrial-development agency, under MIMIT's oversight) approved a Contratto di Sviluppo — the established negotiated-subsidy instrument it uses for large-scale reindustrialisation and strategic-investment projects — for Italian Green Factory SpA, part of the Tea Tek group. The deal channels EUR 67 million of direct Invitalia incentives (a mix of non-refundable grant and subsidised loan) plus an additional EUR 29 million of financing support via the SME Guarantee Fund, against EUR 103.7 million in total committed investment.
Project split:
Whirlpool washing-machine plant into photovoltaic-component manufacturing. This is the highest-profile deindustrialisation case in southern Italy of the past decade — Whirlpool closed the site in 2020 after years of union and government pressure to keep it open.
plant, also earmarked for the solar-manufacturing supply chain.
systems for electrical transformers and switchgear panels.
designed for integration into road and urban infrastructure.
Employment commitment: 294 former Whirlpool employees (already rehired on the Invitalia/Tea Tek payroll since 31 October 2023 under an interim industrial plan) plus 55 net new hires, for 349 total positions tied to the plant's ramp to full production.
sites (Whirlpool Naples, ex-Embraco, ex-Blutec, ex-Ilva) into green-tech manufacturing via Invitalia's Contratto di Sviluppo instrument rather than through a dedicated EU Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF) state-aid window — structurally distinct from the TCTF-anchored schemes in Portugal (2024-03-26-portugal-rcm-49-2024-tctf-strategic-sectors-investment), Hungary (2023-08-30-hungary-tctf-net-zero-state-aid-scheme), and Slovakia (2024-02-13-slovakia-act-31-2024-tctf-net-zero-exceptional-investment-aid), which are horizontal aid windows rather than single-company contracts.
when the EU is trying to reduce reliance on Chinese-made PV modules and cells under the Net-Zero Industry Act (2024-06-22-eu-net-zero-industry-act) benchmark (40% of EU annual deployment needs to be met by EU-manufactured net-zero technologies by 2030).
further southern-Italy investment announcements; MIMIT explicitly framed the site's transformation "from a symbol of industrial crisis to a centre of excellence for photovoltaics and the green transition."
Invitalia's entry into IGF's capital (see amendments: above) confirms the SME-Guarantee-Fund leg of the package was structured as direct equity (49% stake) rather than a loan guarantee — a more binding, harder-to-unwind form of state support than originally reported in September 2025.
domestically, from the EU, or imports Chinese-made intermediate inputs for final-assembly at the Naples and Pomigliano lines — determines whether this adds genuine upstream EU capacity or is another downstream-assembly greenwash of Chinese supply.
reaches nameplate production capacity within the Contratto di Sviluppo's standard multi-year completion window.