You are Carmen Etxebarria-Aldama, 42, VP Strategy at Industrias Cantábricas, a €920M Basque industrial group. A 7-year strategic alliance with the Italian forging firm Ferriere Lombarde is on the table for electrolyser-stack manufacturing. The architecture you commit to determines whether this is the green-hydrogen partnership of the decade or the next Boeing-787 case study.
The situation
Industrias Cantábricas runs three Basque plants (Bilbao, Erandio, Sestao) supplying forged steel components to wind, automotive and rail customers. €920M revenue, 4,100 employees, EBITDA margin 13%. The board approved a green-hydrogen pivot eight months ago: by Y4, electrolyser-stack components must contribute €180M of revenue. The technology you need — bipolar plate stamping, high-pressure end-plate forging, alkaline-electrolyte gasket assembly — is adjacent to your current capability but not identical.
Ferriere Lombarde is a €640M Brescia family-controlled forging group with deep electrolyser-component process knowledge (12 years on PEM and alkaline stacks), but no commercial relationships with the Iberian gigafactory customers Cantábricas already serves (Iberdrola Green Hydrogen, Cepsa Andalucía H2, Lhyfe Galicia). They want commercial access. You want the process knowledge. Both sides want a 7-year horizon and neither wants a full M&A. The CEOs shook hands six weeks ago in Milan; the architecture goes to both boards in 28 days.