As the largest European manufacturer of aluminum and iron coagulants, Kemira takes a leading role in meeting the new requirements of REACH.
The Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical substances legislation (REACH) is a new set of requirements for the EU chemicals industry. REACH started with a pre-registration that ended in 2008. The first full registration phase, targeting highest volume, highest risk substances ends in 2010. The next two phases are in 2013 and 2018, after which all registrations needs to be maintained.
A game changer
The REACH process is managed by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), based in Helsinki, Finland where Kemira’s headquarters are also located.
“REACH will totally re-define the playing rules of the chemical business within the EU and beyond. There will be new registration requirements, classifications and markings, constantly updated safety data sheets, as well as all additional use and exposure information to be communicated within the supply chain,” says Helena Huttunen, principal REACH specialist at Kemira.
“The regulations are becoming fundamentally stricter. The companies who are able to cope with these demanding ways of working will succeed and get new opportunities. Those who are not able to adapt and react so quickly will lose their game.”
Consortia and SIEFs
The new REACH requirements are much stricter than those of the preceding chemical legislation. Kemira has 500 substances to be registered, of which 100 need to be registered already in 2010.
Two types of new bodies were formed to help companies comply with REACH: consortia and the Substance Information Exchange Forums (SIEFs). The consortia are completely voluntary, with each consortium covering certain substances. Consortium members are mostly manufacturers or importers of those substances.
The SIEFs, on the other hand, have been defined by the REACH legislation. A SIEF is a group of legal entities who are registering the same substance. All the tens, hundreds, even thousands of companies who have pre-registered the same substance must be members of the SIEF to ensure common development of the registration dossier for that one substance.
Kemira is a lead registrant
The consortia manage the contracting for collecting content, but SIEFs are the legal actors that must be managed by the lead registrant and who submit the registration dossiers. Kemira leads the Aluminum and Iron Salt REACH Consortium (AlFe). Altogether, Kemira has 24 substances where Kemira is the lead registrant.
The lead registrant for the SIEF prepares the joint registration submission which contains all the scientific details of the substance as required by REACH: physical, chemical, toxicological and ecotoxicological. The companies also prepare the chemical safety assessment, either jointly or individually. The lead registrant has to be transparent to the members of each of the relevant SIEFs in the registration communication with ECHA.
Text by: Randel Wells
This is a summary of an article published in Waterlink, Kemira’s stakeholder magazine’s issue 3/2010.