Electrolux Cuts 1,719 Italian Jobs

The last kitchen hoods at Cerreto d'Esi will be made before December. Then the Electrolux line in the hills of Le Marche will fall silent, with all 170 workers losing their jobs as production moves to Poland. Across five Italian sites, the Swedish group announced 1,719 layoffs on May 11, reducing its Italian workforce from 4,500 to about 2,800 (Il Fatto Quotidiano, MarketScreener). A few weeks earlier, it had closed its plant in Jászberény in Hungary, with another 600 jobs gone.

Electrolux is moving with the tide, not against it. Germany's BSH, the Bosch-Siemens appliance business, is closing two factories, with 1,400 jobs to go by 2028. Turkey's Beko has shut sites in Italy, Poland and the UK. China's Haier has closed the historic Candy plant near Milan. Samsung's output in Poland is expected to fall by 30% this year. The European white goods industry, the factories that make washing machines, fridges and ovens, is being stripped back piece by piece.

The Cost Gap That Can't Be Closed

The figures Electrolux brought to Italy's industry ministry leave little room for romance. Factory labour in western Europe costs about €37 per hour. In Turkey, it is €9. In China and Thailand, it is €5. Industrial electricity costs roughly €204 per megawatt-hour in western Europe, compared with €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's wider picture is the same: EU industrial electricity prices are roughly twice US levels and nearly 50% above China's.

The market under those factories is shrinking as well. 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 has fallen from 30 million units in 2010 to fewer than 10 million today (Il Foglio). Fewer buyers, tougher competition and higher costs make a hard arithmetic. For companies such as Electrolux, the calculation points in only one direction.

Loud Words, Empty Toolbox

Italy's industry minister, Adolfo Urso, called the Electrolux plan "unacceptable" and demanded that it be withdrawn. Three metalworkers' unions held an eight-hour strike. The problem is that Rome has few levers to pull. Golden Power, Italy's foreign-investment screening system, does not apply because ownership is not changing hands. The next ministerial meeting is on June 15. Electrolux has not shifted.

The same pressures are now cutting into Germany's industrial core. Gesamtmetall, the metal employers' federation, projects up to 150,000 job losses 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 are aimed elsewhere. The Clean Industrial Deal, the EU's main competitiveness response, supports upstream sectors such as steel, chemicals and aluminium. Appliance assembly is outside that frame. Germany's new subsidised industrial electricity rate, approved by the Commission in April, is expected to save companies less than 10% of total electricity costs. That is too little when competitors are paying three or four times less for power.

The EU-Turkey customs union, the trade agreement that allows goods to move tariff-free between the two markets, makes the gap sharper. Turkish-made appliances enter the EU at zero duty, while Turkish factories do not carry the EU's carbon price, energy levies or labour regulation costs. Arçelik, the Turkish group that now controls Beko, can produce at a fraction of EU costs and ship freely into the single market.

Poland, now responsible for 39% of EU large-appliance production, is still attracting investment. Its advantage is narrowing quickly. Labour costs rose 7.7% year on year in late 2025, its industrial electricity prices are among the highest in the EU, and Electrolux is already moving service jobs from Kraków to India (Gazeta.pl).

Brussels is spending billions on clean tech and semiconductors. The factories that make the appliances found in almost every European home are quietly leaving the continent, and for now they sit outside the political priority list.