The chemical laboratories of the Agency
The chemical laboratories of the Excise, Customs and Monopolies Agency were established in 1886 as an advisory body for the Italian Financial Administration, or rather Customs (once called "Chemical Laboratory of the Gabelle").
Chemical laboratories are currently responsible for research and product analysis tasks aimed above all at the import-export sphere as well as at important national industrial productions (tobacco, salt and sugar, as well as petroleum products and alcohol), for the exact application of the customs tariff and manufacturing taxes, and the analysis for private subjects in the market regime and in cooperation with the police.
Over the course of more than a century of activity, the chemical laboratories have assumed more and more relevance and importance, both from a technical and scientific point of view in the national and European context, as state-of-the-art laboratories in the various commodity sectors in which they operate, from analyses in the agri-food field, to those on toys and drugs, as well as recently on medical face masks.
All Customs and Monopolies Agency’s chemical laboratories are accredited by ACCREDIA, the single national accreditation body, as a multi-site laboratory with accreditation number no. 1831.
The chemical services of the Excise, Customs and Monopolies Agency are currently hinged within the Agency's Anti-Fraud Directorate and consist of 15 offices distributed throughout the Country and a Central Structure, the "Laboratories Office", also equipped with its own chemical laboratory, which deals with the direction and coordination of Territorial Directorates on chemical analyses, the management of the quality system of the laboratories, as well as the organization of Proficiency Tests and the activities of marketing related to the supply of laboratory services under a market regime.
Multi-site laboratory accreditation
The 15 chemical laboratories of the Excise, Customs and Monopolies Agency and the Laboratories Office are all accredited by ACCREDIA as a multi-site laboratory, with reference number no. 1831.
The multisite laboratory is divided into several decentralized units, called secondary offices, and in a central structure, in which a series of activities and functions are centralized. All the activities at the central, secondary and peripheral offices are attributable to a single quality management system.
Accreditation certifies the technical competence, independence and impartiality of laboratory activities in accordance with the requirements of the UNI CEI EN ISO / IEC 17025: 2018 standard and ACCREDIA documents. Accreditation ensures that the results of accredited analytical tests are accepted with confidence both in Italy and abroad.
The updated list of the laboratory’s accredited tests is available at the following website: https://www.accredia.it/en/.