An Italian bank has been accepting wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral for loans for over a century, and the sys...

An Italian bank has been accepting wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral for loans for over a century, and the system has never once lost money. Credito Emiliano, known as Credem Bank, was founded in 1910 in Reggio Emilia, right in the heart of the region that produces the cheese. The bank operates climate-controlled warehouses stacked floor to ceiling with hundreds of thousands of Parmigiano Reggiano wheels, each one sitting on wooden shelves while it slowly ages and gains value. The setup exists because of a brutal cash flow problem. Parmigiano Reggiano must age at minimum 12 months before it can be sold, with many batches running 24, 36, or even 40 months. Producers still owe wages, animal feed, and energy costs every single month while that revenue sits locked up in a wheel of cheese. When a producer brings wheels to the warehouse, each one gets scanned and entered into a digital registry, essentially a passport recording its origin dairy, production date, and current condition. At 12 months, inspectors from the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium tap every wheel with a specialized hammer, listening for defects by sound. Only wheels that produce a clean, uniform tone get the fire-branded certification seal. Once certified and logged, producers can borrow 60 to 80 percent of each wheel's value upfront, using the cheese itself as the guarantee. The warehouse confirms to the bank that the stock exists, is in good condition, and matches the collateral registry. According to consortium representative Fabrizio Raimondi, the system covers roughly 300 producers and over 2,000 dairy farmers, in a sector turning over more than 4 billion euros annually. Blockchain technology has now expanded the program further, allowing producers to pledge wheels as collateral even while storing them at their own facilities, which has doubled Credem Bank's lending capacity in the sector. In 2025, exports of the protected designation cheese crossed 50 percent of total global sales for the first time. #Italy #Food #Business