UK federation calls for extension to REACH pre-registration

ERJ staff report (DS)

London -- The UK_based Chemical Business Association (CBA) has called for the European Commission to extend the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of CHemicals) pre-registration period by six weeks as the result of the persistent unreliability of the REACH IT system.

Melvyn Whyte, Chairman of CBA's REACH Task Force, said, “Complex IT systems always encounter problems and REACH has been no exception. However, as around 70 percent of all pre-registrations use the bulk pre-registration process, the inability of this system to function efficiently will have a serious impact on industry.”

The REACH IT process for bulk pre-registrations was six weeks late in becoming available, a factor which has significantly reduced the six month pre-registration period available to industry. Since then there have been intermittent problems with the system 'timing out' registrants. Currently, the processing time for bulk pre-registrations is taking several days with error messages taking anything up to eight hours to arrive.

“The situation requires an urgent solution and the CBA is calling on the European Commission to adopt a more flexible view of the pre-registration period and extend it by six weeks - the period that was lost to industry at the outset of the six month period,” said Melvyn Whyte.

“We understand that the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is sympathetic to the situation facing industry, but is powerless to act as only the European Commission has the authority under the REACH provisions to prevent industry from being unfairly penalised because of the unreliability of the REACH IT system,” he added.

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Press release from CBA