Akzo Nobel Surfactants supports the main objectives of REACH, a high level of protection for human health and the environment, which are consistent with our commitment to Product Stewardship - the responsible and ethical management of the health, safety and environmental aspects of a product throughout its total life cycle. Through our Responsible Care® program we have been proactively working towards the aims of REACH for quite some years.
Our key priority for the implementation of REACH is to cooperate and coordinate closely with our customers and suppliers to ensure that the required information is exchanged between all actors in the supply chain.
We are well positioned and committed to support our customers to make this very challenging task a success. We will also continue to provide input to the EU institutions and contribute to making REACH a workable legislation.
REACH is a single system which requires the Registration of all substances
manufactured or imported in the EU in quantities starting from 1 ton/year.
Producers and importers have the responsibility to demonstrate the Safe use of the chemicals in the intended applications based on their hazardous properties, uses, exposures
and volumes. Use of a substance will be legal only in registered uses
This requires information to be passed up and down the supply chain between all actors
The Regulation exempts certain substances to be registered when covered by
other policies or present such a low risk in order to avoid duplication of
the provisions of other legislations.
REACH reforms the current legislation by:
Providing an improved protection to human health and the environment,
Increasing knowledge about the properties and uses of existing substances,
Establishing an efficient risk assessment process.
Requiring the registration of all substances manufactured or imported in quantities starting from 1ton/year
Registration requires gathering data on physicochemical, toxicological and ecotoxicological properties of substances as well as specifying individual identified uses and assessments of the associated risks and safety measures connected to these uses.
Under REACH, manufacturers and importers will have to submit information to the EU Chemical Agency in Helsinki.
Essential parts of the registration dossier are:
a technical dossier (for substances > 1 ton/y)
and an additional Chemical Safety Report (for substances > 10 tons/y)
In the Evaluation, the EU Member States can check the compliance of any dossier submitted for the
registration of each substance and carry out a more detailed check according to the risk for human health
and the environment. Authorization will be required for each substance belonging to specific groups with
certain hazardous properties.
On 1 December 2008, eighteen months after this entry into force, pre-registration information must have been submitted to the Agency in order to permit Data sharing and facilitate partnering for joint registrations.
The following deadlines apply for transitional substances (declared to be on the market in 1981):
The primary tool for information transfer to downstream users under REACH will be the Safety Data Sheet.
Our Internal REACH implementation organization and processes needed are already in place
and we have so far done a thorough review of our product portfolio and substance data.
We have also started the dialog up and down the supply chain and are collecting information
on uses/applications via a customer questionaire.
The forming of consortia is key within REACH. Our long experience as an active member in
chemical industry associations makes us prepared for the procedures and tasks that will be
required when the SIEFs (Substance Information Exchange Forums) will be formed at the end
of the pre-registration period.
The transmission of information along the supply chain is a very important part in REACH
legislation. To insure your application will be taken to account you can as a first step
fill in our uses/application questionnaire by either contacting your regular Sales Manager
or contact our REACH Administrator via our dedicated e-mail:
Reach.Surfactants@sc.akzonobel.com
and we will get back to you to gather required information.
The clock starts ticking!
Our commitment to help our customers be ready for Reach will lead all of us to success.
