The Campanian pasta maker has published its first sustainability report, setting out in black and white its commitment to product quality and safety, and to dialogue with consumers.
Even during the most restrictive periods of lockdown, Italians never gave up pasta, the country's comfort food par excellence. It comes as no surprise, then, that a leading producer in the premium segment such as Pasta Garofalo managed, despite enormous difficulties, to continue growing, recording revenues of 219 million euros in 2020, a 36 per cent increase. But alongside economic sustainability, the Campanian producer has continued to invest in the social and environmental sphere too, as demonstrated by the publication of its first sustainability report, produced in collaboration with LifeGate.
Strictly speaking, this is the second report in the company's history, but the producer chose to give the 2019 edition an internal circulation, as a moment of awareness of its own strengths and weaknesses, before making the 2020 report public, once the most significant issues that emerged from the first assessment had been addressed.
The main new developments in the report concerned the supply chain. Responding to widespread public and consumer sensitivity around the use of herbicides, Pasta Garofalo can confirm that glyphosate is not used in its principal wheat supply chains.
Also in the interest of greater transparency, the generic wording "EU/non-EU" on Pasta Garofalo's packaging has been replaced with an indication of the country of origin of the wheat, namely "Italy and the United States (Arizona)", enhancing and further clarifying the provenance of the raw material. Today, the report explains, Garofalo's procurement policy focuses primarily on Italy and Arizona — the two geographical areas that, in the company's view, currently guarantee the highest levels of quality, environmental responsibility and food safety.
Quality Italian pasta is made exclusively from durum wheat. Italian law also sets other parameters relating to purity and protein content, establishing a minimum protein level of 10.5 per cent for Italian pasta. It may seem paradoxical, but it is precisely for this reason that Garofalo does not use durum wheat sourced exclusively from Italy. In Italy, unlike in other countries, the practice of differentiated storage by quality class is not widespread, and this shortcoming means that higher-quality production becomes indistinguishable from medium- to low-quality production.
Seeking to guarantee a protein level even higher than the legal minimum (around 14%), Garofalo therefore also sources "Desert Durum" wheat from Arizona, regarded as one of the finest durum wheats in the world for its high protein content — the result of particular climatic conditions and cultivation methods that allow large quantities of nitrogen to be absorbed. It is also distinguished by the tenacity of its gluten, the colour of its semolina and the consistency of the qualitative parameters of its supplies.
To these distinguishing features should be added the fact that the favourable climatic conditions of this geographical area significantly limit the development of mycotoxins, and that the safety levels of Arizona wheats are very high.
Australia is another supplier country: although it is not among the largest wheat producers, it nonetheless guarantees very high quality standards.
The diversified origin of the wheat also allows the company to manage the variability of Italian production more effectively in the event of price increases or adverse weather conditions.
In recent years, however, Italy too has developed a supply of high-quality durum wheat with elevated safety levels, driven above all by growing demand from the pasta industry. In this new landscape, Garofalo has increased the share it uses in line with availability on the market from time to time, making use of a silo storage facility located in Puglia, where Italian wheat is collected predominantly from southern regions and, where possible, through supply chain agreements. This wheat has excellent protein characteristics and comes from crops that do not use glyphosate and that are capable of guaranteeing a product with an extremely low level of mycotoxins.
During 2020, Garofalo worked on drafting a Supplier Code of Conduct, which will come into effect during 2021. By the end of that year, therefore, all suppliers will be required to accept and comply with the contents of the document. The code is based on the values of integrity and ethics already set out in the code of ethics of Ebro Foods (the Spanish group of which Garofalo is part), in order to create a shared culture underpinned by the principle of transparency.
Another Garofalo initiative highlighted in the report is its attention to consumer needs. In 2021, for example, it surveyed a group of coeliac bloggers and consumers to gather ideas and opinions for the renewal of its gluten-free range, focusing in particular on aspects of quality, assortment and clarity of information.
In the same vein is the collaboration with Cook, the cookery website of Corriere della Sera, for the development of a new Alexa skill (Amazon's voice assistant) that provides users with guidance on the sustainable use of products at home and suggestions for healthy recipes. Alexa can suggest the recipe of the day based on the user's location and the outside temperature, pairing the dish not only with the weather but also with the seasonal availability of ingredients. The "clear out the fridge" function involves asking Alexa for a recipe based on ingredients already available at home — perhaps approaching their use-by date — in order to avoid food waste.
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