Who talks about pasta immediately thinks of Italy, Naples, South Italy. Pasta is one of the most appreciated products in the world. After a period in which it spread and won the international markets, consumers’ attention shifted on quality. Not all pastas are exactly alike and for this product, too, excellences exist. This happens as for the products proposed by the makers of pasta who manage the company De Matteis, marketed with the name ‘Il grano di Armando’ (Armando’s Wheat). They chose to produce pasta with 100% wheat coming from Southern Italy, involving the producers of a wide land between Campania and Puglia, far from sources of pollution and industrialization. The result is a certified pasta produced with selected wheat. Just this meticulous selection of wheat allowed to realize a highly proteinic pasta, digestible, tasty, with an intense scent. This pasta reminds in its final result the same pasta that was prepared every day by housewives. Besides the traditional formats, such as spaghetti, other ones have been rediscovered that were a heritage of kitchens and lands of South Italy and whose names reminds daily and country life: schiaffone (in Italian, ‘schiaffo’ means slap), lumacone (slug), chitarra (guitar) and many other ones. Besides flavour and tradition, the company worked out a strategy according to principles of ecology and respect for nature. This way, a natural local product was born that made a tour around the world, presenting itself as a symbol of a rediscovered tradition, preservation of the environment, thanks to low impact production methods, too. However, besides the green and rural image, its flavour most of all won the markets, so that ‘il Grano di Armando’ more than a pasta is considered as an alimentary product with a peculiar identity. This pasta shows a strong flavour and an excellent performance in cooking, because it perfectly matches the flavours of Mediterranean cooking, such as seasonings with fish, vegetable sauces, soups with legumes. Three ingredients make the history of this pasta unique: the involvement in the quality processes of local wheat producers, very slow drying, bronze drawing.
The bond with its land
This successful experience was born in a land whose name is Irpinia, known as ‘green Irpinia’, thanks to its fields with cereals, vineyards, and olive groves, and mountains from which chestnuts, mushrooms, and truffles come. The area that pushes out towards Puglia has been cultivated for millennia with wheat, thanks to the closeness of important water sources, among the biggest ones in Europe, too. This is a beautiful land, that however is isolated and little populated. In the past, this isolation was cause of emigration, but today it is a winning feature for quality productions with an ecological identity. Irpinia, far from pollution, with its very clear water, scrupulous preservation of old seeds, invested a lot on quality agriculture. After the great acclaim it had with such wines as ‘Greco di Tufo’, pasta, too, had its international acknowledgement. The pasta factory De Matteis involved local producers and informed them about the importance of quality and environment. The result consists in obtaining a product with a ‘green’ identity, but also the opportunity of certifying its quality, making it unique and constituting a team that promote the land of Irpinia with its agricultural traditions.
From Irpinia to international markets
In its export strategy, the pasta of ‘Grano Armando’ does not want to loose in its company image the features of tradition, country, Southern Italy. This image results to be winning on the crowded international market of Italian pastas. These makers of pasta set out to conquer America, but both German and Japanese market received them well.
A zero impact packaging
Sustainable development award, Slow Pack award: ‘Grano di Armando’ was awarded two prizes for its ecological packaging. In harmony with the ecological tradition of this land, where environmental protection was equivalent to the protection of family, community, rural economy, this pasta is sold in entirely recyclable packagings. ‘Il Grano di Armando’ is the first pasta with a packaging realized with compostable materials, papers that are included in certified programmes of reforestation, coupled with a vegetable film with biodegradable glues, and printed with ecologic inks, without any plastic materials. The packaging can be entirely disposed in wet wastes. It is biodegradable and disintegrable in a short time, does not release any dangerous substances and does not alter the quality of the so produced compost.
