Editorials
Ilsa products are exactly what they say they are
25/01/2019
The Ilsa company laboratory achieves impeccable results in the inter-laboratory tests organized by the UNICHIM, the Association for the Unification of the Chemical Industry Sector, confirming the reliability of the products analysis. This means extra safety for farmers who choose Ilsa’s fertilizers and biostimulants for their crops.
(Arzignano, VI). No false claims for Ilsa products. Ilsa’s laboratory is accredited with the UNI EN / ISO 17025 by ACCREDIA, which is the only Italian organization authorized to evaluate the testing and calibration of laboratories. The Ilsa laboratory checks all the data reported in the packaging of Ilsa formulations, thereby providing transparent and certified information. The company laboratory, which has been certified from 2015 by ACCREDIA after a three-year preparation period, is authorized to issue certificates for parameters such as carbon, nitric nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen and total nitrogen (whether it is an elemental analysis or Kjeldahl), which is valid not only in Italy but also all of Europe.
In the recent inter-laboratory tests organized by the UNICHIM, Ilsa has obtained impeccable results. This year, there were four tests: two on fertilizers involving 126 laboratories and two on compost involving 146 laboratories. The outcome was positive, particularly for the fertilizer matrix and the accredited parameters.*
Compared to a reference value obtained from the average of the results provided by all the laboratories, a deviation between 0 and ± 2 (with zero being “no deviation”) is considered acceptable. Ilsa’s laboratory, considering all the inter-laboratory circuits that it has been participating in since 2012, has obtained 0.93 for the non-accredited parameters, with all data perfectly in line with the norms. For the accredited parameters, the deviation decreases to 0.28, confirming the importance and authoritativeness of the certification.**
It should be underlined that laboratories generally operate for private businesses and are not, as in the case of Ilsa, corporate structures that are uniquely devoted to the strict observation of its own products.
Alfonso Iannone, Chief of Ilsa’s laboratory, talks about maniacal control when he explains the process that the products must undergo during the analysis for the accredited parameters: “Far from being only a brand to boast, the accreditation is a tool which leads to a maniacal control of all the phases of the analysis, including instrumentation and human resources, to provide accurate and high-quality data over time.” This is the reason that farmers can trust what is written on Ilsa’s product labels. Ilsa guarantees farmers as well as its industrial partners that the fundamental chemical parameters of its fertilizers correspond to the truth, which provide tested and authentic data, thereby contributing to efficient and precise agricultural methods.
*Test results are available on request.
**During the inter-laboratory tests, the analysis results for every single parameter are evaluated with an algorithm that measures the deviation of the value provided by every single laboratory compared to that calculated from the average data of all the participating laboratories. If this value deviates excessively from the average data, the laboratory must suspend the tests being conducted to determine the parameters and investigate the causes behind the extreme deviation.
