SINGAPORE companies which export chemicals to Europe must pre-register by Dec 1.

This is in line with the new REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) regulation, implemented in the European Union (EU) on June 1 last year.

REACH requires all chemicals manufactured, sold and used in the EU to be registered with a central agency, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) over a period of 11 years.

A company that has not pre-registered by Dec 1 will have to submit an immediate registration, or risk facing an export ban on its products.

According to ECHA, over one million pre-registrations have already been received, covering more than 50,000 chemicals from more than 18,000 companies worldwide.

As pre-registration may only be carried out by a European legal entity, it was not possible to determine how many Singapore-based companies had pre-registered their chemicals.

The Singapore Chemical Industry Council (SCIC), however, believes that most companies in Singapore that need to pre-register have already done so, or are making final preparations to do so.

This was because although a six-month window had been given for pre-registration from June 1, Singapore companies were already preparing for it in the past two years, with assistance from Spring Singapore and SCIC.

Awareness was raised through a series of seminars, workshops and the publication of a REACH guidebook for small and medium-sized enterprises, and regular alerts of the regulation by Spring.

The local chemical industry is a sizeable one. Last year, Singapore exported about $11 billion worth of chemicals and related products to the EU, accounting for 23 per cent of total exports.

Companies which need help on REACH may contact Spring's Export Technical Assistance Centre via email at etac@spring.gov.sg, access the website at www.spring.gov.sg/etac or call 62793807 for more information.