Piombino is an Italian town and comune of about 35,000 inhabitants in the province of Livorno (Tuscany). It lies on the border between the Ligurian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea, in front of Elba Island and at the northern side of Maremma. Historically the port features a very important commercial development, as in the neighborhood arose a very big commercial district. Nowadays Piombino is the fifth port in Italy for number of passengers and links Italy to Sardinia, Corsica and the Elba Island.
The current set-up of the port has been historically conditioned by the presence of the large steelworking industries that arose at the close of the 19th century, and were to develop during the last century in the areas surrounding the port. Piombino is in fact home to an important industrially productive district, where the companies present are controlled by some of the most important multinational groups in the world.
Thanks to this type of traffic, and others linked to different companies in the territory, Piombino is in seventh place amongst Italian ports for the dry bulk sector. The other historic vocation of the port is closely linked to the ferry sector (Elba, Sardinia, and in season Corsica) given the high number of passengers (the fifth port in Italy), a consequence of the