Traceability will no longer be a utopia and the short supply chain a mirage for the excavation of marble. After decades of “wild west”, the municipal administration of Carrara is preparing to complete the regulatory framework built in recent years to regulate and control the billion-dollar economic sector, launching a clear operational scheme to make the requirements of Regional Law 35 on the supply chain realistic short, giving legs to the traceability of the blocks. After months of discussion and consultation, the long-awaited regulation “on the traceability of stone materials extracted from the marble basins of Carrara” arrives in the city council on Monday. As already announced by the mayor Serena Arrighi, who had kept the delicate delegation of marble for herself, it will be a “two-step traceability”, implemented by systematizing the power of control of the public and the responsibility of entrepreneurs.
“A mixed public-private system which to trace a block from the quarry to its processing will involve two distinct steps: the one from the quarry to the weighbridge and the one from the weighbridge to the processing factory – he explained –. The first step will be public and will provide that each block is assigned a number and a unique code which will be used by the Municipality to know the extraction process, the deposit and the type of material extracted. The second step will instead be up to the individual concessionaire who, as stated by the regional law itself, will be responsible to demonstrate the on-site processing of its product. Each individual processing company will be able to use the traceability method it deems most appropriate as long as it complies with the technical specifications indicated”.
From the moment the regulation comes into force, after approval by the council on Monday, the Municipality will have a detailed picture of the supply chain at all times: no longer just the blocks passed through the weighbridge but also those processed in the companies on the floor. In fact, every day the companies will have to transmit all the data on the blocks processed electronically to a server indicated by the Municipality. A procedure that will allow the administration to carry out precise checks on compliance with that 50 percent of on-site processing as required (for 9 years now) by regional law 35.
A clear commitment that the mayor Serena Arrighi had had the opportunity to confirm several times in the face of protests from entrepreneurs. “We have the duty to apply the law and protect the rights of the community – he said – and we certainly have no intention of giving in to the threats of those who, fortunately few, pursue the conflict at all costs and who one day makes a commitment and the next one appeals to ask for it to be annulled”. And so came the definition of the regulation that now gives legs to that commitment.
A regulation that starts from the precise definition of what is meant, for example, by quarry, cutting material, ‘local production system’, concessionaire and supply chain, but also the times for the entry into force of new rules, controls and sanctions. A system of checks, carried out on a sample basis, which in the event of a negative outcome will weigh on the obligation for the concessionaires to process 50 percent of the extracted material on site and therefore on the maintenance of the concessions.
It will be an App, already created by the Grillina administration and passed through a long experimentation carried out by the entrepreneurs themselves on a voluntary basis, to guarantee traceability from the quarry to the weighbridge: it will become mandatory for companies to have an electronic device with camera and GPS geolocator to “censure ” the blocks extracted and fill in the “loading list” which will then be verified at the public weighbridge. Excavation will also enter the era of technology to become a traceable supply chain.
Emanuela Rosi
