Offshoring and Reshoring Policies in Southern Italy's Strategies of Development and Growth

The industrial fractionation in offshoring has produced a gradual decentralization of Italian production with highly negative impacts on employment and, in some cases, it resulted in the loss of identity of well-established excellent goods. However, the increase in on-site labour costs and the lower quality of components, in addition to more and more incisive translog costs, are pushing businesses to come back to their countries in Europe and the USA, thus recording deep product and process innovations through the reengineering of manufacturing stages. But, with regard to Italy and to the South, some results are possible, among other things, also with special tax and financial incentives, especially towards the real economy, where transport and logistics markets represent the engine. Significant results could come from the logistical recovery of retroports, necessary to encourage investment attraction and the implementation of reshoring policies to return some or all of the made-in-Italy supply chains. To this end, the SVIMEZ has suggested Logistical Territorial Supply Chains, with access to the sea in corresponding commercial ports to boost export flows. But it is equally necessary the recovery of former industrial disused lands located near commercial ports to make them suitable for retroports-distripark-logistics districts or areas to store containers and rail vehicles using the sea economy. These industrial areas have high potential market values, if recovered as logistics districts, since the logistics real estate in Italy far exceeded the values of trade real estate and of the conventional industrial building.