Cement

Within the secondary production sector, the cement industry belongs to the industrial manufacturing segment and more precisely among the process activities, which are defined as such because they use systematic transformation processes to radically modify and confer specific finished/usable and technological properties to its products to the extent that they are clearly differentiated from their respective raw materials.  

The current method of producing cement was patented by Joseph Aspdin in December 1824. The owner of a furnace in Yorkshire, England, Aspdin secretly produced the first hydraulic cement by burning a mixture of limestone and clay at a high temperature. The gray color and stone-like appearance of the binder, as well as its solidity and durability, resembled Portland stone which was named after the small village of Portland in Cornwall, well-known for its prized building stone. The name "Portland Cement" thus comes from its appearance and not from its place of origin.

Certifications
The transformation of standard 197-1 from experimental (ENV) to harmonised (hEN) in 2001 meant that all EU member states were obliged to adopt it.
The 2011 revision extended standard EN 197/1 to include additional new cements, based on experiments carried out by member states over the years, which have made it possible to steer choices towards more sustainable products with a lower environmental impact.

Thanks to this standard, each of the 27 types of cement produced in the EU must comply with the same requirements, use the same types of constituents, meet the same composition limits, and be periodically checked, according to the same rules, by a Notified Body authorised at European level, which, if positive, issues the CE marking and the certificate of constancy of performance.

Certification of conformity of cements
In Italy, for the issuance of the CE marking and the assessment of the consistency of cement performance, Buzzi Unicem uses authorised Notified Bodies, including ITC-CNR and Tecno Piemonte: on their websites, it is possible to freely consult an archive containing the details of the certificates of a large number of cements produced both in Italy and abroad.
The CE marking indicates that the cement complies with a harmonised European standard (EN 197-1) and allows the structure in which it is used, if properly designed and constructed, to meet the essential requirements established by the European Regulation for construction materials No. 305/2011 (CPR).

The Regulation also introduced the adoption of the Declaration of Performance (DoP), a document drawn up under the responsibility of the manufacturer in which the essential characteristics of the product and the manufacturer's identification data are expressed.
CE-marked cement, checked by an authorised Notified Body, can be used in all EU countries without the need for further checks (principle of free movement of goods).
After cement, CE marking has also become mandatory for many other construction materials.