Chemical enterprises deal with REACH regulation
2009-09-15
International trade became fierce in recent years. Technical requirements became more strictly. As the effect of technical trade barrier, a lot of export products lost their advantage due to cost increasing, some even were withdrew, detained or destroyed.
As we all know, the Regulation of Chemical Registry, Evaluation, Admission and Limitation (REACH) in EU took effect already. According to the regulation, the EU Committee will build a uniform chemical inspection and management system and it will fulfill the management for all chemicals before 2012.Compared with EU’s regulation in recent years, REACH has further influence, which brought almost 30 thousand of chemicals in EU market and its connected weave, light industry, pharmacy etc under Registry, Evaluation and Admission Management System. It’s illegal to sell in EU without the REACH management.
After the implementation of REACH regulation, chemical substance, preparation and materials containing chemical substance could enter the market only after registering under the new founded European Chemicals Management Bureau and getting related technical document. The importer should complete the registry formality for the import products. According to EU’s timetable, annual production or import chemicals under 1000 tons should complete registry within 3 years; annual production or import amount of chemicals, which is between 100 and 1000 tons, should be done within 6 years; annual production and import amount of chemicals, which is between 1 and 100 tons, should be done within 11 years. Otherwise it could not be sold in EU market. At the same time, the regulation provides a strict test criterion and expensive testing cost untaken by enterprises. According to EU’s calculation, the basic testing fee for each chemical will be about €85000, while the testing fee for a new material will be about €570000.
There are more and more strict limitations on chemicals in recent years, while these limitations are usually focus on the products which is added chemicals, such as food and plant products, toy, clothing, etc. REACH regulation makes plenty of chemical factories face the business competition directly. But most export chemical factories did not realize to beat the foreign technique barrier. Therefore they felt helpless when face the technique barrier.
Most our export chemical products are not compulsory for testing. Due to these objective reasons, they lack of contact with inspection and quarantine. They know little about the business information issued by CIQ and the warning of domestic and abroad. For example, many enterprises do not know how to deal with REACH regulation, though AQSIQ opened the only one website Focus on REACH Regulation （http://reach.tbt-sps.gov.cn）.Especially many export chemical enterprises belong to different industries, which are in charged by different department with different management. The chemical enterprises are uninformed because of above two reasons.
There is another common phenomenon that enterprises are used to relying on government and the competent authorities. The area author stays has the fame of Home of Chemicals, where it has about 100 chemical enterprises in the chemical development zone only. In order to help these enterprises to learn and prepare for the REACH regulation, related authorities keep on researching these chemical enterprises after the questionnaire last September. Almost all the enterprises private or foreign investment have exported their product to EU areas. But the result is gloomy. Almost 80% of enterprises write that they will report to CIQ timely and they hope our government could arrange the negotiation. We could see that our chemical international trade will meet big trouble because of REACH regulation. Therefore we have below suggestions:
I、Improve our chemical management regulation and learn from foreign management system. In order to protect people’s health and environment, safeguard and improve our national industry, we have to build our own chemical management regulation basis on EU’s requirement on chemical registry, evaluation and admission. Dangerous Chemical Management Regulation issued by State Council is the main rule about chemical management .Export chemical is usually based on Commodity Inspection Act and some international rule. Though there are few regulations in other departments, they have no connection for each other. Instead there are more than 10 regulations about chemical safety management in US, EU and Japan, which have obvious function and practical.
II、Government department should take effective work. Firstly, an extensive publicity is necessary. Enterprises are required to learn the content of REACH regulation and know how to deal with it for minimizing its effect. Secondly, our government should provide technique assistance for enterprises before or in the process of implementation of REACH regulation, such as the progress of implementation, arising effect, relate data information (export cost data, inspection data, etc),relate law, regulation, new criterion issued by foreign countries, in order to increase the compete advantage of our products.
III、Industry association should set up complete warning system to deal with REACH regulation. Effective communication and coordination mechanism should be established between government and enterprise which should make use of its agent advantage, taking part in the propaganda actively, providing more new information about chemical safety management for enterprises before the implementation of REACH regulation. After its implementation, association should organize enterprises for registry and testing together in order to minimize costs.
IV、Enterprises are the mainstay to deal with REACH regulation. One main character of EU new regulation is that it shifts the responsibility of chemical risk from management department to enterprises. Export chemical enterprises are required to fully learn REACH regulation and its detail content, collect information actively, pay attention to the possible impact and infection, abandon the reliance and indifferent theory and take measures ASAP. Firstly, Export enterprises should communicate with importers in advance to find the resolution. As REACH regulation requires the registry must be carried by the natural person or corporation, our enterprises could get registry through the corporation set in EU by domestic agency, or they could look for business partner in EU and complete the registry together or by their partners. Secondly, enterprises should prepare relate document in time. According to its requirement, enterprise for registry should provide information such as chemical safety data list, chemical safety report, risk control measures, physical and chemical data of substance. More information will be required as the development of registry work. The fact is that many products lack of related data and they could not reach the basic registry requirement of REACH regulation. Therefore chemical enterprises should check its products timely and find out their classification for pre-registry and registry according to REACH regulation. Thirdly, chemical enterprises should reinforce the connection in their industry, domestic or abroad. They could also cooperate with the consultant in EU for information collection. Fourthly, enterprises are required to build whole management system from produce to selling to fulfill the REACH regulation. Try to produce with international standard, new high technique and clean producing technique adjust the product and industry framework and improve the quality of product for achieving export initiative, avoiding the competitive disadvantage after the implement of REACH regulation.