We are delighted to announce that following the success of last year’s event, our 2025 Global Chemical Regulation Conference is scheduled to take place on September 24, 2025. This year’s Conference will bring together over 100 industry professionals, including government representatives, key decision-makers, manufacturers, and distributors.

The UK's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced changes to several administrative fees under UK REACH, which will take effect on April 1, 2025. The UK authorities have explained that this fee adjustment is based on changes in relevant price indices and the costs incurred by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in managing UK REACH. The new standards were published on March 10, 2025, as The REACH Fees and Charges (Amendment of Commission Regulation (EC) No 340/2008) Regulations 2025.

The Global Chemical Inventory Search (GCIS) developed by CIRS Group supports users to search the latest inventory of chemicals globally by entering CAS number or substance name in both Chinese and English. It also provides obligation analysis for global chemical compliance. CIRS continuously monitors and updates to global chemical inventories regularly, trying to help users to know more details of compliance obligations of their substances.

On May 16, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) launched a public consultation on UK REACH, which remained open until July 25. The Alternative Transitional Registration model (ATRm) for UK REACH has been devised in response to the UK government’s impact assessment, which was published in 2023 and estimated that registering substances under UK REACH would cost industry £2 billion by 2030. The consultation sets out proposals to reduce costs for businesses moving from EU to UK REACH with reductions to duplication of data. It also contains proposals to introduce further protections against unnecessary animal testing. The ATRm specifically focuses on the submission of data for transitional substances – this covers substances that were “grandfathered”, New Registration for Existing Substances (NRES), or included in a downstream user import notification (DUIN).

According to information that the British Coatings Federation (BCF) distributed to its members, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) recently launched a public consultation on changes to the administrative fees for UK REACH registrations, with a deadline of September 16, 2024.

On June 24, 2024, the UK's CLP authority, HSE, announced that it has granted legal effect to 88 chemical substances listed in the UK's Mandatory Classification and Labelling (GB MCL) list. This update took effect immediately upon its release and complies with regulations. The updates are based on the 14th and 15th Adaptations to Technical Progress (ATP), which update the CLP Regulation, issued by the European Commission.

In February 2024, UK‘s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announced that the expiry date of all biocide active substances expiring between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2026 would be extended to 31 January 2027. This amendment impacts up to 110 active substances, with the expiration dates of 46 active substances having been formally prolonged.

HSE, the GB CLP Agency, is proposing to update the status of 90 substances in GB mandatory classification and labeling (GB MCL). It is scheduled to be effective in April 2024. These 90 substances are from the 14th and 15th ATP (Adaptation to Technical Progress, which was used to update the EU CLP Regulation) released by the European Commission. These two ATPs were published and came into force before the end of the transition period of Brexit and the HSE has already added these substances to the GB MCL list.

On June 28, 2023, the UK published the REACH (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (No.722) which extends the legislative deadlines for registrants to submit information by three years. The REACH (Amendment) Regulations shall enter into force on July 19, 2023. That is to say, from July 19, 2023, there will be new transitional periods and dossier submission deadlines will be extended to October 27, 2026, October 27, 2028, and October 27, 2030, based on different tonnage bands.

With the first UK REACH submission deadline (October 2023) approaching, the UK government has released a consultation on extending the current submission deadlines. According to the consultation results published on November 29, 2022, 82% of respondents selected to extend the deadline by three years.