In the first progress report on its voluntary action plan for improving Reach registration dossiers, the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) said 165 companies joined the initiative within six months of the launch last June and had meanwhile have reviewed and updated chemical safety data, where needed, in 1,758 dossiers.

“These initial results are encouraging but our work continues. The action plan’s priority this year will be on attracting more companies to join the initiative, starting with members who have not joined yet,” said CEFIC executive director product stewardship Sylvie Lemoine.

Lemoin said CEFIC will also continue working with national chemical industry associations whose members are yet to join the action plan, as well as associations representing downstream users of chemicals, as many of their members also hold REACH registration dossiers. At the same time, it will continue its joint work with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to produce more guidance for the action plan participants to help them revise data in line with the most recent ECHA requirements.

Of the 165 companies that joined the initiative last year, 64% are CEFIC corporate members and the remaining 36% are members of national chemical industry federations.

The action plan, set up in response to criticism that the dossiers were incomplete or out of date aims to achieve a significant contribution to the quality of REACH registration dossiers in cooperation with ECHA. It will run for the period 2019-2026.