Iveco sold to Indian company Tata: Brescia gets off the truck

Brescia – A month ago, Family Day was held to celebrate Iveco's 50th anniversary with workers and families. Ten days ago, the official news was announced: the sale of Iveco Group to the Indian multinational Tata Motors , a transaction to be completed in April 2026, following the sale of the Defense division to Leonardo. "That Family Day was seen as a bit of a joke, given how it went."

Dario Venturini , an electrical maintenance worker at the Brescia plant since 1995 and a Uilm Uil Brescia delegate, tells the story. “When I started working, there were 5,000 of us. Today, we're generous, considering the size of the plant hasn't changed. Back then, we brought in raw sheet metal and trucks came out , except for the engine and tires. Today, we practically only do assembly .”

For Italy, Iveco is one of the jewels in the crown of industrial history. For Brescia , it's a bit like a hometown company. Evidence of this connection is the square in front of the plant, named after Bruno Beccaria , a historic Fiat executive who spearheaded Iveco's founding. "Ultimately, Iveco's history is a bit of a Brescian story," Venturini emphasizes.

The story

To trace its origins, we must trace the timeline back to 1906, when Brixia-Züst was founded in the countryside between San Eustacchio and Fiumicello. This car factory was acquired by OM in 1918, a forge of cars that won the Mille Miglia and, from the 1930s, also of trucks. In 1938, with its entry into the Fiat group, OM became a strategic hub for Italian engineering, but also a hub of union struggles and victories.

The Fiat era

The Fia era However, it really began after the Second World War, when he initiated a restructuring of the factory , making the Brescia plant one of the most modern and complete in Europe for the production of industrial motor vehicles. Among the productions, in 1950, was the 'Leoncino', entirely Brescian . Towards the end of the 1960s, the possibility of the company's closure was averted by the director, engineer Bruno Beccaria (but Antonio Fappani, in his Enciclopedia Bresciana, also mentions the intervention of the then Monsignor Montini), who outsourced part of the processing to workers' cooperatives in Val Camonica, creating a spin-off that would act as a driving force for the Brescian industry.

Together with his friend, Father Ottorino Marcolini, Beccaria also promoted the "villages," new residential neighborhoods for OM workers. The "factory" thus shaped the city, a model later exported to Turin. In 1975, Beccaria led the creation of Iveco, unifying OM, Fiat Veicoli Industriali, Magirus-Deutz, Unic, and Lancia Veicoli Speciali: the OM name remained, alongside Iveco's, on the plant until 1990. Today, with the use of unemployment benefits increasingly common, the years of the "golden citadel" seem distant. For this reason, those who work at Iveco speak of fears regarding the sale to Tata Motors, but they are also aware that a change of pace is needed.

The fear

The concern It's mainly for related industries : there are reportedly 6,000 to 8,000 workers around the Brescia plant, both local (especially small-scale operations) but also from the rest of Lombardy (the sheet metal comes from Mantua, for example). "Many Italian suppliers were already replaced with French ones when Stellantis arrived. Clearly," Venturini emphasizes, "the thought is that Tata Motors can do the same." The hope is that buyers will want to invest. "We've gone from producing 30,000 trucks a year to 10,000. The market is stagnant," Venturini emphasizes, "and on top of that, we're burdened by eco-hypocrisy: how can anyone think of a battery-powered truck traveling across Europe? This won't save the planet, but it will kill the industry. We need investment and a broader vision."