VERONA
CROSSROAD
OF EUROPE
Not simply because of the six million tourists visiting every year, but also and
particularly thanks to its economy, its history and its geographical position, Verona enjoys the
entrepreneurial spirit typical of a land used to international relations. All this is confirmed by the figures
and not only by them: trade with overseas amounts to six thousand billion lire, with a slight preference
for imports (mainly motor vehicles but also raw materials); exports include fresh and processed agricultural
products, shoes, wine (one quarter of all the DOC wines exported from ltaly), marble, clothing and graphic
arts materials. This represents the output of more than 50 thousand businesses, a workforce of 322.000
people, an employment record which, though not disguising the difficulties of those still looking for a job,
is more or less equably divided between manufacturing industries, crafts and agricultural sectors and the
tertiary sector, such as transport, commerce, tourism,
culture, public administration and the fast-growing
services sector.
An excellent balance has thereby been achieved in turning to
advantage the human, commercial, operational, territorial, landscape and strategical resources of the
area. Verona, then, stands comparison on a European scale in order to pursue its role as both producer
and the <<bridge>> between ltaly and the rest of the continent- lt is a manufacturing city which
has already welcomed numerous businessmen from all over Europe, keen to benefit from its strategic
position.
All this makes Verona an area for important records: 30% of the
Italian poultry breeding industry is here, as also 10% of the confectionery sector (the Verona
>>Pandoro>> cake is world famous); it holds second place for marble exports (totalling 400
billion lire), third place in terms of turnover in the footwear sector, leader in the thermo-engineering field,
among the leaders for beef and pork production, as also for paper and the graphic arts, as well as many
other records in other fields.
Yet it is Verona's objectives for the year 2000 which will
ensure further development. The basis for this growth was already planned in the immediate post-war
period, with the setting up of the Verona Sud industrial-commercial area, now covering 10 million sq.m.
(twice the size of the old city) and housing 800 companies employing 20 thousand people.
Similary, Verona took steps twenty years ago to ensure the
status of its University, set up around two fundamental faculties: economics and medicine. Yet this is
history, while the present is equally promising: the new Catullo Airport handles more than 6 thousand
flights and 320-000passengers, and is set to become one of the most important cargo centres in northern
Italy. More than half of its new <<Quadrante Europa>> industrial centre (4 million sq. m.) is
already occupied by the Customs quarters - Italy's second busiest inland port - the interport with its
huge railway yards for intermodal traffic, the business centre, which provides all the services required
for European transport, and the coming Centre for Innovation.
Verona, however, not only aims at strengthening its
manufacturing base, its services and its functions as a motorway and railway route centre. It is
concerned with culture and finding new ways to produce- Research is therefore covered by the
soon-to-be-opened Centre for Innovative Business and the enormous European Pharmaceutical
Research Centre (employing 500 people). Nor should one forget, however, the city's role as an
agricultural and traffic centre, as demonstrated by the General Stores (the first in Europe to install
cold cells), soon to be transferred to the <<Quadrante Europa>>, the Fruit & Vegetable
Markets (110 companies, 4 thousand employees, 30% of goods handled are for export) and the
enormous Fairgrounds which for ninety years have linked agricultural output with outlet markets
through the increasingly specialised trade shows. A Fair system which, thanks to the newly-constructed
Agricenter (a services centre for bringing together production and producers from the whole of Europe),
is currently taking on a whole range of new functions, including that of international goods Stock
Exchange.
