Dow Jones Flash News/Radiometric controls extended in Italy

Flash News
by Gianclaudio Torlizzi Radiometric controls extended to metal semifinished, risk of congestion in Italian ports. Radiometric control over imports from extra-EU countries through Italian ports will become mandatory for all metal semifinished products as of April 7th. Such control is currently applied only to ferrous and non ferrous scrap, as established by a legislative decree (n. 230/1995), but it will be then extend to the other materials. Though not yet widely spread, the news is likely to cause a pandemonium within the metal market. Radiometric control over scrap at ports is now pursued in a ‘non-professional’ way, with manual portable instruments. In spite of that, it seems to work as the materials to check are not excessively abundant. However, with the new measure becoming effective, the amount of materials to be submitted to radiometric control could increase to 30 million tons (the amount of metal products in containers traveling through Italian ports every year) from today’s 2,7 million tons (of ferrous and non ferrous scrap). Since Italian ports are not adequately equipped to do controls of such extent, the result would be a huge congestion of materials in the ports with prices of raw materials consequently skyrocketing. This would be dreadful for a sector and an economy that are trying to get out of the crisis with pain. Gianclaudio Torlizzi Dow Jones Financial Information Services via Burigozzo 5 20122 Milano Tel.: +39.02.58219919 Mobile: +39.347.67.69.186