Reach may hamper chemical transhipments

20 November 2007 18:54  [Source: ICIS news]

HAMBURG, Germany (ICIS news)--Europe’s Reach (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) regulations could seriously affect the ability of traders to tranship cargos through European ports to onward destinations, a senior Hamburg city official said on Tuesday.

Gunther Bonz, state secretary of the City of Hamburg, said that Reach could make handling chemicals that pass through Europe’s ports very difficult, especially if they are imported from a non-EU country by one trader, put in to storage and then sold to a second trader for direct export to another non-EU country.

He explained that because the ownership of the goods would have changed in these circumstances, then the goods would have to conform to the Reach regulations, even though they were not destined for a European market.

This would be an additional cost burden on firms trading at the port.

Bonz said 3m of the 9m tonnes/year of all goods that pass through Hamburg are transhipped.

He said he feared “a new transhipment port being developed in North Africa or Dubai,” for chemicals in order for shippers to avoid the Reach regulations, and that Europe would lose business.

Bonz added that the ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven and other members of the European Sea Ports Organisation are lobbying the EU for clarification.

“By my heart I am a European guy, but not all the things coming from Brussels and Strasbourg are right,” Bonz said.

Bonz was speaking on the sidelines of the 14th ICIS Fine and Speciality Chemicals Conference in Hamburg, Germany, which ends on Wednesday.

By: Simon Robinson
+44 20 8652 3214

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