What is the meaning of REACH and are kolb products REACH compliant?
All chemicals supplied by kolb are fully REACH compliant.
REACH stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of CHemicals. It is the binding regulation on chemicals No. 1907/2006 of the European Union, which entered into force on June 1, 2007. As an EU Regulation REACH is equally and directly valid in all member states. REACH fundamentally harmonizes and simplifies the previous European chemical legislation.
From June 1, 2008 to December 31, 2011, the pre-registration for REACH ran, where each manufacturer or importer of the EU had to report to the chemicals agency ECHA (European CHemicals Agency) whether a registration is planned. Non compliance entailed the principle of "no data, no market" meaning not registered or pre-registered chemicals / raw materials are treated as "new" and a marketing is allowed only after registration.
All the raw materials provided by kolb in its cleaning products are REACH regulation registered or pre-registered, so that the long term availability of all products from a legal point of view is fully assured.
kolb is known for more than 25 years as the pioneer of environmentally friendly cleaning in the electronics industry and as one of the first companies which has launched solvent-free, aqueous chemicals industry-wide. Therefore it is only logical that substances and raw material used by kolb can neither be found on the SVHC (Substances of Very High Concern) list of ECHA nor on the SIN (Substitute It Now) list of CHEMSEC (International Chemical Secretariat), a yet much more rigid Swedish non-profit organization.
The most important tool for communication in the supply chain remains here the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), where in the future the registration number, where appropriate, information on the restriction of uses and particulars of the authorization requirement as well as the "identified uses" have to be additionally communicated - a specification requirement which kolb has already fulfilled in 2011.
