Fondo per la transizione industriale
Grants for businesses improving energy or resource efficiency at an existing manufacturing site in Italy.
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The Fondo per la transizione industriale supports changes to an existing production process to save energy, water or raw materials, or reduce waste sent to landfill. The third call is closed. Its rules, described here, use the EU General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER); the temporary crisis-and-transition aid route available in the first two calls was excluded.
The investment must contain €3 million to €20 million in eligible expenditure. This is the size of the investment submitted for support, not the grant amount. Grant rates apply to the eligible cost base, which may be the extra cost of the environmental improvement rather than the whole investment.
For energy-efficiency measures, the base grant is 30% of the extra cost compared with a credible investment you would make without aid. It rises by 20 percentage points for small businesses or 10 for medium businesses, plus 15 points in regional-aid zone a or 5 in zone c. Alternatively, using total investment costs gives a 15% base rate and half those uplifts. A clearly identifiable investment solely improving energy efficiency can use total costs under the standard-rate method when no less-efficient alternative exists.
For resource-efficiency or circular-production measures, the base grant is 40% of eligible extra costs, with 20 points more for small businesses or 10 for medium businesses, and 15 points more in zone a or 5 in zone c. Total costs can count for an add-on with no less-environmentally-friendly equivalent, or where you demonstrate that no investment would happen without aid. Fundamental changes to the production process use a separate regional or SME aid route.
Eligible investment categories include new machinery and equipment, software and technology rights. Land and necessary site works are capped at 10% of total eligible investment, and necessary building works at 40%. Costs are net of VAT. Used equipment, running costs, notarial costs, taxes, stocks, internal orders and individual items below €500 excluding VAT are excluded. The cost of buying a property that received non-tax aid in the ten years before the application is excluded unless that aid was revoked and fully recovered. Purchases must be from unrelated third parties on market terms, capitalised and used exclusively at the supported site; road-registered vehicles do not qualify.
Renewable electricity, renewable hydrogen, renewable-powered high-efficiency cogeneration and connected storage for self-use can accompany an energy-efficiency project, up to 40% of its eligible investment. Generation must match the site’s annual demand; selling surplus is allowed. Storage must form part of a combined renewable investment or connect to an existing renewable plant, and absorb at least 75% of the directly connected renewable generator’s annual energy output. Building-efficiency work must concern industrial or craft buildings in category E.8 and is capped at 40% of the Article 38 energy-efficiency spending.
Related staff training can accompany the investment up to 10% of the investment programme’s total spending and must concern the technologies being introduced.
Payment is requested against progress in up to four instalments plus a final balance. Each progress claim must cover at least 20% of approved costs; payments during implementation cannot exceed 80% of the awarded grant. Submit the final claim within 60 days of completing the project. The final payment follows verification of the investment and its environmental results. Trainees’ wages and general overheads are excluded from training support.
Eligibility
These conditions describe the closed third call. The project must concern one existing, operational manufacturing unit in Italy, classified under ATECO section C. A business whose main activity overall is different can qualify if manufacturing is the main activity at that site. Newly incorporated businesses are not automatically excluded, but a new production plant is not eligible; taking over an existing operation can qualify if the investment is financially sustainable.
Your business must be legally constituted and registered. Businesses based outside Italy can use their equivalent home-country register, but must have an Italian establishment by the first disbursement request. You must be current on social-security contributions and aid-recovery debts, have repaid or blocked incompatible EU aid, and not have been an undertaking in financial difficulty at 31 December 2019. Voluntary liquidation and insolvency proceedings aimed at liquidation are excluded; going-concern restructuring can qualify if all other conditions are met. Disqualifying sanctions, specified management convictions, anti-mafia impediments and other statutory bars to public support also exclude applicants.
Start after submitting the application: starting construction or making the first binding equipment order or other irreversible commitment counts, whichever happens first. Buying land, seeking permits and feasibility studies do not count as starting. Complete within 36 months of the award; Invitalia may grant a justified extension of up to 12 months. Capacity expansion is allowed only for technical needs and must not exceed 20%. Energy-intensive businesses must fund measures beyond their mandatory energy-audit obligations.
Measures required by national law or EU rules already in force do not qualify. Work to comply with an adopted EU rule not yet in force may qualify if completed at least 18 months before it takes effect. Under the Article 47 resource-efficiency route, projects cannot concern waste disposal or energy recovery from waste, encourage waste creation or increased resource use. You must also show that the technology is not already an established profitable commercial practice across the EU, with evidence of novelty and a longer unaided payback period than ordinary investments.
Fundamental process changes qualify for large businesses only in the designated “a” areas on Italy’s regional aid map; small and medium businesses can use this route elsewhere in Italy too. The map identifies the areas eligible for regional investment aid and classifies them as “a” or “c”. For fundamental process changes under regional aid, a simple machine replacement is insufficient. Steel, lignite and coal are excluded. Large businesses must have eligible costs exceeding depreciation of the assets being modernised over the previous three financial years. At least 25% of eligible costs must come from funds without public support. You must not have relocated activity to the site in the previous two years and must commit not to do so for two years after completion.
The project must comply with environmental law and the “do no significant harm” test: it must avoid significant damage to the EU environmental objectives. Fossil-fuel activities and assets are excluded, with the decree’s tightly specified natural-gas electricity or heat and related infrastructure exception. Activities covered by the EU system for trading greenhouse-gas emission allowances (ETS) must have expected emissions below the applicable benchmark used to allocate free allowances, except temporary technically unavoidable fossil use for timely transition; expected emissions not significantly below the benchmark require justification. Waste landfill, incineration and mechanical-biological treatment assets are excluded, with an exception for plants dedicated exclusively to treating non-recyclable hazardous waste and a separate exception for specified improvements to existing plants that do not increase treatment capacity or extend life, supported by plant-level evidence. For existing incineration plants these are efficiency, exhaust-gas capture or material recovery; for existing mechanical-biological plants they are efficiency or improving separate-waste recycling into composting and anaerobic digestion.
Installing equipment directly powered by fossil fuels, including natural gas, is excluded under the energy-efficiency routes. However, reducing use of steam or hot water produced by an existing fossil-fuel generator can qualify as indirect use.
For the third call, large businesses must declare compliance with mandatory catastrophe insurance when applying. Medium businesses must do so for applications from 2 October 2025. Compliance is also checked at disbursement.
Do not finance the same costs twice. Keep supported assets in the project region for five years after completion, or three years for SMEs, with replacement allowed when assets become obsolete or unusable. Keep expense records for ten years and allow inspections and EU audits. At the final check Invitalia reassesses environmental results: a ranking-score reduction above 20% can cause partial recovery of the grant, and a reduction of at least 50% causes total recovery.
Do not relocate the supported economic activity away from the incentivised site for five years after completion, including to another site in Italy or elsewhere in the EU/EEA. Notify Invitalia in advance of company or project changes. Changes only to total spending or the amounts claimed for cost categories are assessed at payment and do not require advance notification.
How to apply
- Status
- stängd
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- Closed third PNRR call; applications used GBER aid only.
The third call closed on 10 December 2025. Use Invitalia’s official programme page for the published ranking and any future intake announcement; its existing-beneficiary processes do not constitute a new application window.
Applications for that call went through Invitalia’s personal area, with one application per production unit and a ranked assessment rather than first-come allocation. Italian-incorporated companies first registered in “Anagrafica e deleghe”, checked the Infocamere data and added any delegates.
A sworn technical report must explain the investment, eligible costs and environmental outcomes, including negative effects. For the third call it could be signed, depending on the project, by a registered geologist, engineer or industrial expert (including an employee), a certified energy-management expert, a certified energy-services company, or the applicant’s legal representative for investments within its certified ISO 50001 energy-management system.