There is not much time left. December 1st is the deadline to initially register chemical products being traded in the EU in the Reach system. Polish Ministry of Economy warns that companies which have failed to do it so far may have problems with registration of substances they produce or import. Unless they manage to do it in time, they may need to close operations. There are thousands of latecomers. Many small companies did not know they needed to register. Out of at least several thousands companies from Poland which should register products, only 449 actually did it.
If they apply in the eleventh hour, the European electronic registration system Reach-IT may collapse. It’s already overloaded.
“European companies have registered more substances than the system provided. It was supposed to cover 160,000 different chemical products while about 1m have been registered already. Two big European companies registered 100,000 products”, Andrzej Krzeslak, the head of the contact point at the Ministry of Economy responsible for Reach said.
The Polish chamber of chemical industry PIPCh representatives say the big firms will be OK.
“Big companies have managed to initially register their products. There may be cases of single chemical substances of which they were not sure if they are under Reach system or not. Smaller companies are the problem”, Jerzy Majchrzak, PIPCh expert said.
Many companies have learnt only now that they need to register and they frantically look for information.
“We get 40-50 enquiries every day. We are not able to answer all of them”,
Andrzej Krzeslak said.