Companies Stretch to Meet REACH Deadlines

2008-12-04 | 07:24

Half of submissions come within three weeks of the Dec. 1 cut off.

It was a bit of a stretch, but in the end, there were plenty of chemical companies willing to comply with the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization Chemicals (REACH) regulations. More than 2.2 million companies — including beauty firms — that manufacture chemicals in or import chemicals to Europe and the European Economic Area countries, including Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, preregistered the substances by midnight Dec. 1 under REACH..

The six month registration processes ended up covering more than 100,000 substances, according to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), of Helsinki. Half of the companies’ submissions came during the last three weeks before the deadline.

“Companies that have failed to preregister cannot continue manufacturing or importing their substance until they have submitted a full registration dossier,” stated ECHA. ECHA will publish a list of preregistered substances on Jan. 1. Following that, the next step for preregistered companies is to begin sharing data in Substance Information Exchange Forums.

“Companies starting to manufacture or import a substance at or above 1 ton per year after Dec. 1 for the first time can benefit from late preregistration provisions,” stated ECHA. REACH came into force in June 2007 and focuses on the making and usage of chemicals and their possible influence on human health and the environment.