China NCSN Certificate Holder Name Undisclosed in Recent MEP Publication

On 19 Mar 2014, China MEP issued on its website the 3rd batch of China new chemical substance notifications (China NCSN, a.k.a China REACH) to be approved in 2014. If no dissenting opinions are raised by 21 Mar, the registration certificates will be formally issued.

Among the listed three new chemical substances, two are notified as hazardous new chemical substance of priority environmental concern and one as a general new chemical substance. The details are specified in Table 1.

Interestingly this time the certificate holder’s name was not released for public consultation, which has been the practice for the previous two batches released. When asked about this issue, the authority explained that Article 23 of MEP Order 7 stipulates the MEP shall publish information of candidate new chemical substances, including substance names, applicants, notification type and management categories. However, there is no specific rule that stipulates it is necessary to publish the certificate holder’s name. What’s more, when published for public consultation the notification is actually not approved yet, and theoretically there is no “certificate holder”. Therefore, MEP in the future will no longer release the certificate holder’s name.

Whilst the official explanation for this practice is quite logical it is more likely that the change in protocol is primarily to protect the interests of private enterprise and their confidential business information. For example, a non-Chinese manufacturer may designate his importer as the certificate holder, if this information were exposed, the importer’s client can bypass the middle man and directly import from the non-Chinese manufacturer. It is likely that lobbying by such groups pressured the MEP into this recent decision.

Approved notification information is released by the MEP twice a year. The China NCSN statistics for the latter half of 2013 was issued with the Certificate No. as well as the certificate holders. It is unlikely the authority will repeat this release in 2014.

Table 1. Regular Notifications to be Approved under China NCSN (Batch 3 of 2014)