Janet Murfin writes:

The good news about REACH pre-registration is that the REACH-IT method for pre-registering is currently working OK and is "quite easy to use" (thanks to Stuart Wilkinson of Keystone Chemicals for this opinion!). You need to sign up as a company first, and then you can pre-register products. To access general REACH-IT info, click here, and the REACH-IT portal (where you create a company account from) is found by clicking here.

I created a company identity in REACH-IT on Tuesday 24th June, and it took about 15 minutes (although I'd meant to create a third party, but didn't scroll down to the "third party" link - it was 9pm though, after a long day). And if I can do it, anyone can!

One thing to look out for, apart from making sure you're signing up as the right identity, is that if you have already signed up in IUCLID5 you need to enter your UUID (unique user identity) at the address details page, so that IUCLID and REACH-IT link together. If you don't have an IUCLID identity, there is a link to click on, which lets you fill in your contact information directly, and this will then generate a UUID for you. There is an "export" option, which I think will export your details from REACH-IT into IUCLID5. This is important because your IUCLID5 and REACH-IT identities need to be the same.

The HSE have a couple of major meetings to demo REACH-IT, and having seen the draft presentation at a recent Yorkshire Chemical Focus meeting, I can recommend these talks if you don't fancy having a go at REACH-IT yourself without support. The meetings have morning and afternoon sessions, click here for full details, and to book. The finalised presentation should be available to download from here from Friday 11th July onward.

The bad news about REACH-IT is that at the time of writing (early July 2008), the facility to pre-register groups of products (instead of one at a time) is still not operational.

Also at the time of writing there is a major glitch whereby your VAT number can only be used for one company identity within REACH-IT. Example - if you have several clients you are acting as Only Representative for, you need to set up several company identities, one for each client. As Joe Bloggs Chemicals, you decide to call them Joe Bloggs Chemicals A, B etc, but you will find that you can only do this if you leave the VAT number blank on B, C, D etc. Fortunately, the VAT number is not mandatory! HSE are aware of this problem and trying to get it resolved (if technically possible).

Good luck to all those pre-registering substances, and if you need help, call Janet on 01422 24 22 22.

News article 8th July 2008