CE Marking for agglomerate stone

As every other product, as of 2010 the agglomerate stone industry has to comply with CE Markings for agglomerate stones, I must add that it's taken too much time to actually see these new rules in the market, as natural stone and the ceramic industry have been complying with CE markings for a while now. It's been a difficult task to provide the agglomerate stone industry with final CE Marking statements due to a conflict of interests between the solid surface industry based on Breton technology and all the other producers. Leading the Committee has been the Italian interest in making tough tolerances for the product, their main effort is to slow down the oriental competition, using the CE Markings as a tough standard to comply with, most International producers would need to invest in equipment and technology to overcome some limitations that they currently have.
As of 2010 the Agglomerated stone - Modular tiles for flooring and stairs (internal and external) have to comply with the CE Marking standards.
The document itself focuses on the following:

• Definition: What is a modular tile? 
• Size and shape: definition of tolerances regarding size and shape
• Surface finish 
• Requirements for flooring and stairs modular tiles made of agglomerated stones: Technical requirements that are defined for the product namely:
• Apparent density and water absorption
• Flexural strength
• Abrasion resistance
• Chemical resistance
• Visual appearance
• Reference sample, visual inspection and acceptance criteria
• Reaction to fire
• Slipperiness
• Thermal conductivity
• Thermal shock resistance
• Tactility/visibility
• Linear thermal expansion coefficient
• Electrical resistivity
• Impact resistance
• Frost resistance
• Dimensional stability

• Marking, labelling and packaging: defines what type of markings and documentation should follow the product
• Evaluation of conformity: defines testing types and frequency and Factory Production Control for the agglomerate stones

Quarella : Worlds Biggest Agglomerate Stone Producer

Quarella as I mentioned in a previous post is the biggest agglomerate stone producer. Yes Quarella is the biggest! This post about Quarella will be the first of a series, which I plan to focus on the worlds top producing companies.
Why is Quarella the biggest agglomerate producer?
Quarella has a yearly output of 4.000.000 sqm, they produce agglomerate marble and quartz, plus the group has two other companies which also produce agglomerate products which is Rover and Prestige.
 Quarella is located in Northern Italy close to a small city called Verona, basically near one of the mos important regions of marble quarries in Italy. For more than 40 years they've been supplying composite stones to the local and International market.
Important to say that Quarella has it's own resin plant producing it's own binding agent, which is the only factory in the world who actually got into the resin producing business. It also has one of the most advanced R&D labs in the world.
Their technology is based on Breton's vacuum vibro-compression system, although they've added a lot of their gained know-how. In their block producing units they have created a new product which they hope will recover the block production units. Due to the constant evolution in pricing and the markets in general, the marble based agglomerate has lost much of it's markets, creating big problems for companies like Quarella who invested millions in plan facilities and equipments. Marble having technical low parameters regarding wear and usage, has lost a lot of market quota to other products. Quarella has launched the Evo Series which is a product that has better technical tolerances than marble, as it uses a harder stone in it's composition.
In the quartz units, Quarella produces in Italy and in Spain at Prestige, they have as most other big factories specialized their production lines, although they've got a terrible logistics problem, as most of the production made in the Spanish plant, returns to Italy to be resent to the final destination with other Quarella products produced in Italy.
Rover is also part of Quarella group, although it has it's own sales channels and production units, so it's basically a stand alone unit specialized in marble based agglomerate and recently they have a limited range of quartz agglomerate products.