Reach compliance to cost US chems $ millions

09 March 2007 20:07  [Source: ICIS news]

BALTIMORE, Maryland (ICIS news)--Complying with the European Union’s (EU) new chemicals management programme is likely to cost some US producers millions of dollars, a European regulatory specialist said on Friday.

 

Wolfgang Ihme, head of Task Force Reach at Swiss-based contract research firm RCC Ltd., told chemical industry executives that compliance with various requirements of the EU’s programme for registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals (Reach) may soon put a dent in the budgets of US firms exporting to Europe.

 

The key cost driver, Ihme told the GlobalChem regulatory conference, will be a range of testing procedures that will be required of products being registered under the Reach plan.

 

Studies and testing required of chemicals exported to Europe in the 10-100 tonne/year volume range could cost up to $13,100 (€10,000) for each compound registered. 

 

Exports in the 100-1,000 tonne/year category will require screening and analysis costing as much as $65,500 per chemical product, and export volumes in excess of 1,000 tonnes/year may incur test costs of as much as $131,000.

 

Those costs can of course be apportioned among the corporate members of consortia that are being set up, allowing multiple producers of the same chemical substance to pool their expertise and costs in registering the product. 

 

Even so, said Ihme, testing costs for relatively low-volume producers and exporters with multiple products could easily top $1m.

 

Major producers of multiple, high-volume chemical products exported to Europe can expect to pay several millions of dollars, he said, noting too that companies registering products under Reach also will have additional costs for legal representation, commercial agents and travel, among others.

 

In what is generally regarded as a low estimate, the EU has forecast that Reach will cost the chemicals industry about $3bn over the 11-year registration process.

 

That estimate appears extremely conservative compared with the anticipated Reach costs of just one firm. Chemicals major BASF predicts its Reach compliance costs at $724m over 10-12 years - nearly one quarter of the EU’s industry-wide cost estimate.

 

Ihme spoke in one of the concluding sessions of the three-day GlobalChem conference, which was co-sponsored by the American Chemistry Council and the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association.

 

($1 = €0.76)

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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