Part B: Mineral Rights - Part B-6: Beneficiation - Processing, Trade & Transport - 35. Beneficiation – Processing, Trade and Transport | 35.5 Certification of Development Minerals Products
Certification of development mineral products
refers to the processes to be followed in establishing the quality, origin and
compliance with public policy of those products. Certification will also ensure that
development mineral products are compliant with other laws such as EITI laws,
environmental laws and labour laws (i.e. child labour). The objective is to inform the markets for
those products as to their quality and origin so that the markets may exert
pressure on producers and traders to provide products that meet certain
standards as to quality, origin and compliance.
This in turn should foster improvement in the quality of development
minerals, better health, safety and labour practices by the development
minerals sector, and improvement in the sector’s environmental protection
practices. Such improvements should contribute to the enhancement of the value
of development minerals, improvements in the quality of local construction
generally and the expansion of the markets for development minerals.
Certification involves standards, a process for verifying the extent to which the standards have been met, and procedures that assure that the final products delivered to the consumer do in fact meet the relevant standards. Institutionally, this requires an authoritative institution that establishes standards, an independent authority that conducts verification by testing and analysis, and a regulatory unit that monitors and enforces tracking of products through the value chain and publishes the results of its findings.
This section deals with the rules and information necessary in order to establish and maintain standards and enable their enforcement along the value chain.