First results of EU chemical industry REACH Action Plan reveal progress on updating safety data

31 March 2020, Brussels. – Cefic published the first progress report on the implementation of its voluntary Action Plan for update and improvement of chemical safety data in REACH registrations dossiers launched in June 2019. As part of this Action Plan, Cefic is honouring its commitment to transparent reporting on companies’ progress in updating dossiers, by publishing aggregated data at the end of Q1 of each year.

The 2019 results are as follows:

• 165 companies joined the Action Plan in 2019.
• These companies have reviewed and updated, where needed, chemical safety data in 1758 REACH registration dossiers between June and December 2019.

Most of the work in 2019 was dedicated to internal planning, prioritising dossiers for re-evaluation or discussing a joint update plan with consortia (if a dossier has been submitted jointly with other manufacturers).

From the 165 companies that joined the Action Plan in 2019, 64% are Cefic corporate members and the remaining 36% companies are members of national chemical industry federations.

Cefic Executive Director Product Stewardship Sylvie Lemoine:
“These initial results are encouraging but our work continues. The Action Plan’s priority this year will be on attracting more companies to join the initiative, starting with Cefic members who have not joined yet.  We will also continue working with national chemical industry associations whose members are yet to join the Action Plan, as well as associations representing downstream users of chemicals, because many of their members also hold REACH registration dossiers. We will continue our joint work with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to produce more guidance for the Action Plan participants to help them revise data in line with the most recent ECHA requirements”.

Background information

On 26 June 2019, Cefic launched an unprecedented multi-annual action aimed at proactively and systematically reviewing and improving, if needed, the data previously submitted in REACH registration dossiers. The Cefic multi-annual Action Plan provides a framework for REACH registrants to evaluate the safety data in a stepwise manner. The aim of this initiative is to achieve a significant contribution to the quality of REACH registration dossiers, in cooperation with ECHA.

Companies participants of the Action Plan commit to annual reporting about their progress. The data that Cefic collects includes the number of dossiers that have been re-evaluated each year.

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