Registration of PECs in South Korea Needs Speeding Up

South Korea’s MoE designated 510 priority existing chemical substances (PECs)  subject to K-REACH joint registration in July 2015. The corresponding registration deadline of 30 Jun 2018 is approaching. However, so far only 315 PECs have finished the lead registration (LR) election.

Based on the time required during consortium communication, data gap analysis, data purchasing, generating testing data, etc., PECs that haven’t finished the very first step yet i.e. LR election, are unlikely to make the registration deadline. 

According to Korean authorities, although the K-REACH regulation is facing huge amendments to make it more like EU REACH and the revised version is proposed to be adopted by 30th of June 2017 and enter into force one year later, the original deadline for PECs registration will still apply without any delay. 

Speaking at ChemCon held in Beijing on 19 Jun 2017, Ms. Jean Cho from Chemtopia shared that if no LR is elected before deadline, the MoE recommends the member with highest tonnage become the LR. In addition, the authority recently reviewed current circulation of PECs and found that more than 100 PECs had no manufacture or importation records. The main reason for this is attributed the fact that PEC designation was based on the statistics generated in 2010. Many stakeholders involved with these PECs opted out of the markets in the following years.

Currently even the authority has no idea how many PECs will be registered. According to Ms. EunKyong Ryu from BASF Korea, making a K-SIEF agreement has taken longer than expected and communicating with EU consortiums to purchase data has not been smooth. It is the Korean chemical industry’s first taste of single substance joint registration work, and many in the industry believe the authority should provide more support.

When the revised K-REACH is adopted, a phase-in registration mechanism for around 7000 existing chemical substances (≥1t/y) will be applied. One possibility is to include any PECs that fail to meet the registration deadline into the new list (around 7000 substances) and to have another registration grace period. However, no details have been announced.