Latest data reveals the chemical Industry’s voluntary REACH dossier review plan is on track

Phil Black - PII Editor 11/08/2023

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The second progress report on the implementation of Cefic's voluntary Action Plan for REACH dossiers update and improvement found that the number of dossiers evaluated in 2020 in the framework of this Plan increased by 55% compared to 2019.

The key results are (as of December 2020):

190 member companies representing 1355 legal entities holding REACH registration dossiers signed the voluntary commitment.
2731 REACH registration dossiers were re-evaluated in 2020, which is 55% more compared to reported re-evaluated dossiers in 2019, bringing the total of all evaluated dossiers to 4489 since June 2019. The number covers registrations dossiers in all tonnage bands, both lead, and member registrations.
Based on the forecasts submitted by member companies, it is estimated that 7,170 REACH lead registrants' dossiers will have been reviewed by 2026, representing one-third of all substances or more than half of all non-intermediate substances registered under REACH^[1].

Sylvie Lemoine, Cefic Executive Director Product Stewardship, said:

“The EU REACH remains the most comprehensive regulatory framework for chemicals in the world, and we continue to support our membership's efforts to improve and update their REACH registration dossiers. These latest results are encouraging and reflect the chemical industry's commitment to making REACH work, despite the difficult circumstances of 2020 when unavoidable disruptions to the way many businesses operate affected labs conducting safety testing. More work will be done by participating companies over the next years to better understand potential data gaps and submit testing proposals, where needed. Cefic will continue working with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to help companies improve the content of their dossiers in order to pass ECHA's compliance checks.”

In 2020 Cefic strengthened its cooperation with ECHA by running a joint pilot project for the chemical industry to understand better ECHA's expectations of the quality of chemicals safety data. The objective of the project was to explore different read-across approaches and testing strategies in order for companies to provide new data, where needed, and improve compliance of registrations under REACH. New testing has been or will be performed as a result.

The key conclusions of this project are available for all REACH registrants on the Cefic website. Cefic thanks ECHA for successful cooperation and is looking forward to working on improving the safety of chemicals in 2021.