Reach Registration

There is a special transitional regime for substances which were already manufactured or placed on the market before REACH entered into force. Such substances are called phase-in substances.

Companies benefit from the transitional regime if they pre-registered their substances by 1 December 2008 (or in certain circumstances, made a later pre-registration before the relevant registration deadline).

Substances that fulfil at least one of the following criteria may be considered as phase-in substances in accordance with REACH:

• Substances listed in the European Inventory of Existing Commercial Chemical Substances (EINECS)
• Substances that have been manufactured in the EU (including the countries that joined on 1 January 2007) but have not been placed on the EU market after 1 June 1992
• Substances that qualify as "no-longer polymer''

For these substances, the REACH Regulation sets the following registration deadlines:

30 November 2010
Deadline for registering substances manufactured or imported at 1 000 tonnes or more a year; substances that are carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction above 1 tonne a year; and substances dangerous to aquatic organisms or the environment above 100 tonnes a year.

31 May 2013
Deadline for registering substances manufactured or imported at 100-1 000 tonnes a year.

31 May 2018
Deadline for registering substances manufactured or imported at 1-100 tonnes a year.

ll substances that do not fulfill any of the criteria for phase-in substances are considered as non-phase-in substances. Normally, non-phase-in substances have not been manufactured, placed on the market or used in the EU before 1 June 2008, (unless they were notified under the Dangerous Substances Directive (67/548/EEC)).

Potential manufacturers and importers of non-phase-in substances have to submit an inquiry to ECHA and subsequently register the substance before they can manufacture or import the substance.

All substances notified under the Dangerous Substances Directive (also called NONS) are considered to be registered under REACH and ECHA has assigned registration numbers to all the notifications. The owners of the notifications can claim the registration numbers from ECHA.

IUCLID (International Uniform Chemical Information Database) is a software application to capture, store, maintain and exchange data on intrinsic and hazard properties of chemical substances. It is a key software application essential for chemical industry to comply with the REACH legislation. The IUCLID tool will assist chemical companies globally in fulfilling their obligation to submit data (such as REACH registration dossiers) to the European Chemical Agency.

Data that can be stored and maintained with IUCLID  include information about:

• The party running IUCLID  (production sites, contact persons, etc.)
• The chemical substances, namely their:

• Composition
• Reference information, like CAS number, IUPAC name and other identifiers
• Classification and labeling
• Physical/chemical properties
• Toxicological properties
• Eco-toxicological properties
• Any report relevant to the substance (e.g. study result, assessment)

The OECD and the European Commission have agreed on a standard XML format, called OECD Harmonised Templates (OHTs), in which most of the aforementioned data are stored for easy data exchange. IUCLID 5 was, in 2007, and is still today the first application that has fully implemented this international reporting standard.
Numerous parties are involved in the IUCLID Project that is managed in a joint effort by OECD and ECHA, helped in their tasks by OECD Member Countries, the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) of OECD as well as by the entire IUCLID users community.

REACH-IT is the central IT system that supports Industry, Member State competent authorities and the European Chemicals Agency to securely submit, process and manage data and dossiers. These three parties each have access to specific functions of REACH-IT which they can use to fulfill their requirements under the REACH and CLP regulations. REACH-IT also provides a secure communication channel between these three parties to help them coordinate the processing and evaluation of data and dossiers.