As the last deadline of May 31, 2018 for REACH registration comes close, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has taken several steps to facilitate joint registration before 2018. On the one hand, ECHA provides materials online to support registrants in their efforts for REACH compliance. On the other hand, much improvement has been made to the IT tools for better and efficient delivery of data.

Materials are being published by ECHA to help for the two phases of the REACH2018 Roadmap this year: phase 1 ‘Know your portfolio' was launched in June and the launch of phase 2 ‘Find your co-registrants' took place in November. ECHA will continue to create new support web pages next year and roll out phases 3 to 6 of the Roadmap.

Technically speaking, a “new generation” of IT tools to support REACH registration will be available next summer: IUCLID for creating dossiers; REACH-IT for submitting them; and Chesar for preparing chemical safety assessments. Notable changes to the customer interface and functionalities will also be realized. Registrants will see much more user-friendly tools than current ones.