Electrolux cuts 1,719 jobs across Italy

The last kitchen hoods will roll off the line in Cerreto d'Esi sometime before December. All 170 workers at the Electrolux plant in Italy's Marche hills will lose their jobs when production moves to Poland. Across five Italian sites, the Swedish company announced 1,719 layoffs on May 11, cutting its workforce from 4,500 to about 2,800 (Il Fatto Quotidiano, MarketScreener). Weeks earlier, it shut its Hungarian plant at Jászberény, another 600 jobs gone.

The rest of the industry is already leaving. Germany's BSH (the Bosch-Siemens appliance arm) is closing two factories, 1,400 jobs eliminated by 2028. Turkey's Beko shut sites across Italy, Poland, and the UK. China's Haier closed the historic Candy plant near Milan. Samsung's Polish output is expected to fall 30% this year. Europe's white goods industry, the factories that build washing machines, fridges, and ovens, is being hollowed out.

The Cost Gap That Can't Be Closed

The numbers Electrolux presented to Italy's industry ministry are blunt. Factory labour in western Europe runs about €37 per hour. In Turkey: €9. In China and Thailand: €5. Industrial electricity costs roughly €204 per megawatt-hour in western Europe, against €77 in Turkey. Cold-rolled steel, the sheet metal that becomes a washing-machine drum, costs 31% more in Europe than the Chinese equivalent (Il Fatto Quotidiano). The IEA confirms the broader picture: EU industrial electricity averages roughly twice US levels and nearly 50% above China's.

The market these factories serve is shrinking too. European appliance sales fell from 90 million units in 2020 to 83 million in 2025 (Quotidiano.net).

Asian producers have doubled their European market share from 15% to nearly 30% over the past decade. Italian appliance output alone collapsed from 30 million units in 2010 to fewer than 10 million today (Il Foglio). Fewer buyers, more competitors, higher costs. The maths only runs one way.

Loud Words, Empty Toolbox

Italy's industry minister Adolfo Urso called the Electrolux plan "unacceptable" and demanded its withdrawal. Three metalworkers' unions struck for eight hours. But the government's toolkit is nearly bare. Golden Power (Italy's foreign-investment screening tool) does not apply because no ownership is changing hands. The next ministerial meeting is June 15. Electrolux has not moved.

The same pressures are fracturing Germany's industrial core. Gesamtmetall, the metal employers' federation, projects up to 150,000 jobs lost in the metal and electrical sector in 2026 alone. IG Metall, Germany's largest industrial union, calls it "a structural danger for our industrial base".

Brussels has instruments, but they miss the target. The Clean Industrial Deal, the EU's flagship competitiveness response, supports upstream sectors like steel, chemicals, and aluminium. Appliance assembly is not on the list. Germany's new subsidised industrial electricity rate, approved by the Commission in April, delivers savings estimated at under 10% of total electricity costs. Not enough when competitors pay three to four times less for power.

Then there is the EU-Turkey customs union (the trade agreement that lets goods flow tariff-free between the two). Turkish-made appliances enter Europe at zero duty, while Turkish factories bear none of the EU's carbon pricing, energy levies, or labour regulation costs. Arçelik, the Turkish group that now controls Beko, produces at a fraction of EU costs and ships freely.

Poland, which now accounts for 39% of EU large-appliance production, is still drawing investment. But its cost advantage is eroding fast. Labour costs climbed 7.7% year-on-year in late 2025, its industrial electricity prices rank among the EU's highest, and Electrolux is already shifting service jobs from Kraków to India (Gazeta.pl).

Brussels is pouring billions into clean tech and semiconductors. The factories making the appliances inside every European home are quietly disappearing from the continent, and they are not on anyone's priority list.