Finland's President Tarja Halonen has awarded the environmental service company REACHLaw a 2009 Internationalization Award. The objective of the award is to encourage businesses to operate in an international environment and to boost their ability to develop and adopt new operating models.

"The Internationalization Awards of the President of the Republic highlights concepts and business models as examples for other Finnish companies that are going international. This year, all the award-winners represent highly specialized expertise and the combination of expertise from many different industries. Furthermore, the international service industry has an important role in their businesses," said Jorma Turunen, President and CEO of Finpro, a Finnish company association involved with the selection of the winners.

REACHLaw is an environmental services company established in 2006. The company acts as a link between the global industry and the new European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) located in Helsinki. In its services, REACHLaw combines legal and business expertise with technical expertise in chemistry and environmental issues. REACHLaw helps companies already established in Europe or wishing to enter the European market to fulfill the obligations set forth by the Reach( Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) Regulation, which came into force in 2007.

"Our company combines expertise in different fields into packaged services for the global customers. The renewal of the EU legislation offered us a fantastic opportunity to participate in the creation of a completely new business," said the company partner and CEO Lasse Musakka. "In addition, Finland's good reputation in the environmental industry is a huge advantage."