Energy, coal, agricultural products and gold

Energy trading with an Italian accent

The second largest segment of the Ticino cluster after metals is energy. In 2021 the Federal Statistical Office counted 27 Ticino firms trading fuels, with 243 employees. The cantonal yearbook for 2023 gives 27 enterprises and 253 employees in the wholesale trade of fuels.¹ The figures cover crude oil, refined products, natural gas and coal. They do not fully capture electricity and gas trading, which is often classified with energy supply. Lugano's energy traders are oriented towards Italy, whose electricity and gas markets were opened to competition from the end of the 1990s and are linked to Switzerland by several cross-border interconnectors.² A trader in Lugano can buy electricity on the Swiss or German exchanges, acquire capacity on the interconnectors and sell into the Italian market, or buy pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas for Italian industrial customers and utilities.

The largest example is the Duferco group's energy arm. DXT Commodities SA, based in Lugano, is the parent of a group that trades renewable and conventional power, natural gas and LNG and is linked with Duferco Energia in Italy, the Brazilian power trader Matrix Energia and a trading office in Shanghai. The group states that it has more than 2,500 counterparties and 396 employees and that it has traded more than 1,062 terawatt hours of energy and gas.³ Other energy traders appear in the association's lists: Enet Energy SA, of which the long-standing secretary of the association is a partner, Sirius Energy, a sponsor of the association's conference in 2026, and Flame SA, whose finance director sits on the executive committee.⁴ Flame SA reported in June 2022 that it had lost about 20 per cent of its business through the closure of the Russian market.⁵ Energy trading carries regulatory obligations that metals trading does not: transaction reporting under the European Union's Regulation on Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT) for trades on European markets and licences or registrations in the Italian market. Swiss law adds a duty of its own: a firm domiciled in Switzerland that takes part in a European wholesale electricity market must send the same reports at the same time to the Federal Electricity Commission (ElCom). Chapter F.II discusses them in the context of the trading company's legal structure.⁶

Coal and coke for the steel industry

Because coal and coke are inputs of the integrated steel industry, their trade developed in Lugano alongside steel. The Coeclerici group, which has a trading office in Lugano, illustrates the model of a trader with its own mining asset. In 2008 the group acquired the Russian company Kuznetskinveststroy and with it the Korchakolsky mine near Kaltan in the Kemerovo region, describing itself as the first foreign company to acquire a mine of pulverized coal injection (PCI) coal in Russia. In 2022 the mine produced 1.3 million tonnes. The group's trading division traded 8.3 million tonnes in more than 25 countries, with revenues of USD 1.4 billion, about 90 per cent of group revenues.⁷ Swiss Italian television reported in March 2022 that the mine produced about 2 million tonnes a year and that the group's Russian exposure made it one of the Lugano firms affected by the war.⁸ The executive committee of the trading association includes a senior trader of Coeclerici Compagnie SA.⁹

Coal trading has become politically difficult in Europe since the European Union banned the purchase and import of Russian coal, with a transition period for existing contracts that ended on 10 August 2022, since Switzerland adopted a corresponding prohibition and since the European climate policy reduced demand for thermal coal. The PCI and coking coal used in blast furnaces remains a traded commodity whose suppliers have shifted towards Australia, the United States and other sources. For Lugano traders the coal business is thus increasingly a business between third countries, for example between Russian or Australian mines and Asian, Turkish or Indian steel makers, which leaves the transaction entirely outside the European Union but not outside the reach of sanctions when the counterparty or the bank is subject to them.¹⁰

Notes

1. BFS, Statistik der Rohstoffhändler (NMP) (above); USTAT, 12 Denaro e banche (March 2026, above), T. 12.6 (2023: "commercio all'ingrosso di combustibili" 27 enterprises, 253 employees, 241.1 FTE). ↩
2. Decreto legislativo 16 marzo 1999, n. 79, "Attuazione della direttiva 96/92/CE recante norme comuni per il mercato interno dell'energia elettrica", Gazzetta Ufficiale, https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/1999/03/31/099G0136/sg; for natural gas Decreto legislativo 23 maggio 2000, n. 164, https://www.normattiva.it. ↩
3. Duferco, "Energy" division page, https://duferco.com/?p=3645. ↩
4. LCTA, "Comitato esecutivo" (above) (Marco Passalia, Partner, Enet Energy SA; Alessandro Odoni, Finance Director, Flame SA); LCTA, "GCC – Global Commodities Conference", https://www.lcta.ch/gcc-global-commodities-conference/ (Sirius Energy among the silver sponsors). ↩
5. RSI, "Materie prime, trading e contraccolpi", 24 June 2022, https://www.rsi.ch/info/ticino-grigioni-e-insubria/Materie-prime-trading-e-contraccolpi--1794263.html (statement of Riccardo Talenti, operations manager of Flame SA). ↩
6. Regulation (EU) No 1227/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency (REMIT), OJ L 326, 8 December 2011, p. 1, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2011/1227/oj/eng; Electricity Supply Ordinance of 14 March 2008 (StromVV), SR 734.71, Art. 26abis (persons domiciled in Switzerland who take part in an EU wholesale electricity market and are subject to REMIT report transactions, plant data and insider information to ElCom "gleichzeitig und in gleicher Form") and Art. 26b, https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-fr/7/73/734.71-26abis-50.html. ↩
7. Coeclerici Group, Forum Verona presentation (above). ↩
8. RSI, "Le materie prime e la piazza di Lugano", 1 March 2022 (above). ↩
9. LCTA, "Comitato esecutivo" (above) (Paola Bazzana, Head of Operations/Senior Trader, Coeclerici Compagnie SA). ↩
10. Council Regulation (EU) 2022/576 of 8 April 2022 amending Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, Art. 3j (prohibition on purchasing and importing coal and other solid fossil fuels from Russia; contracts concluded before 9 April 2022 could be executed until 10 August 2022), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/576/oj/eng; Ordinance of 4 March 2022 on Measures related to the Situation in Ukraine, SR 946.231.176.72, Art. 12 (prohibition on the purchase, import, transit and transport of coal and coal products from Russia), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-fr/9/94/946.231.176.72-12-19.html. On the geography of the trade after 2022 see Chapter G.II. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.