CIRS Successfully Held the EU-Asia Chemical Regulations Conference

On September 26th 2019 CIRS Group successfully held the 2nd annual EU- Asia Chemical Regulations Conference in Dublin, Ireland. The event was held in Clayton Hotel Ballsbridge, and was attended by a diverse audience of more than 30 people from over 10 countries, including Ireland, UK, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, France, Italy and South Korea. The event was well supported by the Chinese Embassy in Ireland, the IDA Ireland, the Health and Safety Authority (HSA), the British Coatings Federation (BCF), and Chemical Watch.

Ms. Cloris Pan of CIRS Group, began the day by introducing Global GHS updates as well as conveying the differences between a number of regions and their GHS requirements. This topic served to highlight how unharmonized the GHS system is region to region. This was followed by Ms. Ellen Daniels of BCF, presenting on Brexit and potential issues caused by the UK leaving the EU. The facts and figures presented gave an overview of commercial concerns and resulted in one of the hot topic discussion points of the day.

In the second session of the day, Mr. Junho Lee of CIRS Group Korea, presented practical guidance on K-REACH now pre-registration is complete. Mr. Lee highlighted the upcoming online system of K-REACH and the envisioned timelines for the future of K-REACH registration procedures. This was followed by Dr. Antonio Conto, M.D. of Chemsafe Srl., who presented on Microplastics and environmental protection. Another hot topic of the day, featured the challenges we face in regulating such an area and how to limit our environmental impact.

The afternoon session began with Mr. Austin McCabe of CIRS Ireland, giving a presentation on China REACH. He focused particularly on the draft revision of the regulatory framework and how it would alter the current processes and obligations of registrants. Mr. Bryan Zhou of CIRS Ireland followed this with a guide through the data requirements of China REACH, K-REACH and EU REACH. He also presented on how you could use one set of data to comply with these regional regulations. The day was then topped off with Mr. Junho Lee presenting a second time, this time on K-BPR. Mr. Lee pointed out differences to EU BPR and the challenges faced in K-BPR registration.

During the Conference, Mr. Walt Lin, CIRS Group Vice President signed a cooperation agreement with Easy2Go logistics services, to provide regulatory and technical support for import, export, product testing and labelling. Mr. Lin praised the success of the conference being attributed to the support of local institutions, European companies and partners.

The 3^rd EU - Asia Chemical Regulations Conference is scheduled for September 24^th 2020 in Dublin, Ireland. It is expected to cover more diverse topics including Southeast Asian chemical regulations, Japanese chemical regulations and an in-depth interpretation of UK-REACH after BREXIT. More details will become available closer to the conference date.