The REACH Legislation, Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006, entered into force on June 1st 2007. The 10-year registration period for existing chemicals is now complete following the last REACH registration deadline on May 31st 2018 for substances, manufactured 1-100 tonne a year.

The last step in the registration process is to submit a dossier to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). In the dossier, you have to identify the risks and how to manage the risks (safe use) of the substance you manufacture or import.

The European REACH Grease Thickeners Consortium (ERGTC) was established in 2008 to bring together all companies in the grease manufacturing industry. AXEL was one of the initiators of the first meeting held in Amsterdam back in 2006.  At that time,  no one really understood the impact of the new legislation and the challenges we had ahead, but we realised that we had to work together to succeed.

AXEL has since then been an active member of the consortia and joined the long and very interesting journey. One of the challenges for us, as a grease manufacturer, has been to make our substances in an isolated form. Normally our thickeners are made in situ in a base oil matrix and some of them are unstable outside the matrix. Our largest substances were registered before the 2013 registration deadline, but most of them had a registration deadline of May 31st, 2018.

The last months were very busy both for testing laboratories, members and consultants.  It was a race against time but in the end,  together with the consortia and our consultants, we managed to submit all our dossiers on time.  AXEL submitted 23 dossiers (15 different substances) and was the only registrant of two of them.

In sum,  all our thickeners sold in EU are now REACH registered or exempted from registration.

Therése Bergström, Reach Project Manager