INTERVIEW: Brazil tranquil on chemical security

01 June 2007 21:40  [Source: ICIS news]

By John Waggoner

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Chemical producers in Brazil enjoy an island of tranquility regarding security issues compared with Europe and the US, a specialist told ICIS news on Friday.

Marcelo Kos, technical director of industrial concerns at Brazilian industry association Abiquim, said while Europe and the US struggle with chemical security legislation, Brazil is more concerned about keeping up with the paperwork these changes create for exporters.

“There is an enormous burden of bureaucracy created by Europe’s adoption of Reach (the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals),” Kos said in a telephone interview.

He said Abiquim, which is Brazil’s principal chemical and petrochemical industry association, is mulling the creation of a company that would help local exporters comply with Europe’s voluminous Reach dossier.

So far, the job is being handled by private consultants.

“Abiquim has been accompanying this for a number of years, but the Reach bureaucracy will be very costly in terms of the quantity of information required and the process of registration,” Kos said of the European Union's preparations for Reach.

The effect, he said, could be a distortion in the global market.

“Faced with these new requirements, exporters are going to wonder if it makes sense to ship their products to Europe,” Kos said in Portuguese.

Brazil currently treats chemical and petrochemical safety under an international convention on chemical weapons. As such, there is no specific legislation similar to Europe’s Reach or site security measures proposed for high-risk facilities in the US.

Moreover, Brazil has no need for such legislation, Kos said.

“The existing legislation is complied with and provides enough protections,” Kos said.

Intentional sabotage of chemical installations or the use of chemical products as weapons are virtually inexistent in Brazil and the principal threat to the industry is from common crime - chiefly the theft of cargo.

Brazil transports nearly 80% of its chemical products overland via truck. While improvements in highway infrastructure are still needed to reduce road hazards, Kos said that the greatest risk is that trucks are hijacked by bandits.

“So far in Brazil there has never been any use of stolen chemical products to make a bomb. The theft is because of the value of the cargoes,” he said.

Cargoes are still occasionally stolen for illicit purposes, such as avoiding taxes, adulterating fuel or processing cocaine.

Abiquim has worked closely with law enforcement and within the industry itself to crack down on such activities, Kos said.

In recent years, for example, there was a wave of armed robbery of cargoes within a 100km radius of Sao Paulo. Police intelligence tracked the cargoes to small local buyers, and with tighter inspections the racket was broken up.

“Abiquim has produced two separate dossiers to help the industry deal with these problems, and plans to release a third,” Kos said.

The new security guidelines will be distributed at the third Abiquim-sponsored Seminar on Business Protection to be held 27 June in Sao Paulo.

By: John Waggoner
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