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REACH-IT receives 2.2 million pre-registrations

03
Dec '08

The six-month REACH pre-registration period closed on 1 December at midnight. EU/EEA-based companies submitted well over two million pre-registrations covering more than 100 000 substances. ECHA is currently processing and verifying the validity of the remaining unprocessed files. The list of pre-registered substances will be published on the ECHA website by 1 January 2009. Companies that have failed to preregister cannot continue manufacturing or importing their substance until they have submitted a full registration dossier.

ECHA's Executive Director Geert Dancet said: “Pre-registration was an enormous success for ECHA. We managed to upgrade the REACH-IT system continuously throughout the six month period despite the exponential growth in the number of preregistrations during the final weeks before the deadline. Having virtually all preregistrations submitted in REACH-IT will permit a timely publication of the List of Preregistered Substances and a swift start of data sharing.”

The REACH pre-registration period which started on 1 June was closed at midnight (GMT) yesterday 1 December. Half of the submissions arrived during the last three weeks. The rapid increase in the number of concurrent users during peak hours from less than 2,000 until October to over 4 000 in late November forced ECHA to add capacity to the REACH-IT system and increase its speed several times. Yesterday, pre-registration via web form was enabled as a back-up procedure to ensure that even in the unlikely event of a last-minute unavailability of REACH-IT companies could continue their submissions.

For the last two weeks of the pre-registration period (17 November - 1 December) ECHA offered enhanced helpdesk assistance to companies that still needed help with their preregistrations. Companies located in the EU/EEA submitted about 2 500 pre-registration related questions. ECHA's helpdesk resolved them in time by email or by phone so that companies could pre-register by the deadline.

The current statistics show that ECHA received over 2.2 million pre-registrations from companies manufacturing in or importing chemicals to the EU and EEA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). A preliminary breakdown by country of pre-registrations and of companies that submitted pre-registrations is attached. ECHA received about fifteen times more pre-registrations than expected. This was mainly caused by several companies submitting all existing substances and precautionary double pre-registrations of the same substance in a supply chain by many companies.

The final numbers for pre-registrations and substances will be announced when ECHA publishes the List of Pre-registered Substances later this month. By that time, ECHA expects to have validated the remaining unprocessed pre-registrations and identified company information which appears to be incorrect or inaccurate; consequently ECHA will only be able to re-open the pre-SIEF functionality later than initially planned.

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