The leading manufacturers of Bisphenol A have joined efforts for their REACH compliance activities and have launched the BPA REACH consortium.

Last update : April 2010 Status Report

Consortium description
Through the BPA REACH consortium, the manufacturers have decided to join efforts to prepare a consistent registration dossier for Bisphenol A. The project management and secretariat of the consortium will be handled by ReachCentrum.

The founding members of the Bisphenol A consortium are the following companies:

• Bayer MaterialScience AG
• Dow Europe GmbH
• Harlan Cytotest Cell Research GmbH representing:
  • Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd
  • Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
  • Mitsui Chemicals, Inc.
  • Nippon Steel Chemical Co., Ltd
• Hexion Specialty Chemicals
• Sabic Innovative Plastics

Substance covered
The following substance has to be registered under the REACH legislation and is covered in the BPA consortium:

Membership
The BPA REACH consortium structure includes Steering and Technical Committees and the consortium secretariat managed by ReachCentrum. The consortium is open to any applicant fulfilling the membership criteria - manufacturers/ importers/ only representatives as defined in the REACH Regulation of the substance on its own, in preparations or in articles and that are subject to the registration requirements pursuant to the REACH Regulation, or Affiliates thereof. The BPA REACH consortium has adopted the Cefic proposal for the coding of SIEFs and will commence communicating with SIEF pre-registrants shortly.

Communication in pre-SIEF and SIEF
On 23rd April 2009, the SIEF Formation Facilitator invited all pre-registrants of Bisphenol A to complete the SIEFreach survey for Bisphenol A. On 19 May 2009, all pre-registrants of Bisphenol A received a summary of the survey results which indicated their selected SIEF status. Meanwhile, some pre-registrants contacted the SIEF Formation Facilitator  to have their level of SIEF involvement changed. Their SIEF status was modified accordingly.

This SIEF status will now be used to manage communication within the pre-SIEF and SIEF. If you have been labelled as dormant in the summary from 19th May 2009 and did not request a modification of this status, you will not be included in any further communication on Bisphenol A.

Please note that your SIEF status can be changed at any time by contacting the SIEF Formation Facilitator or the Bisphenol A consortium secretariat.

Formation of SIEF and Election of Lead Registrant
On 9th June 2009 an invitation to a poll was sent by ReachCentrum to all non-dormant pre-registrants. This poll aimed to facilitate agreement on substance identity and to obtain approval on the Lead Registrant. The results of the poll were distributed to all non-dormant pre-registrants on 26th June 2009.

All participants in the poll accepted the following sameness definition:

Bisphenol A, EINECS 201-245-8, CAS 80-05-7 is a mono-constituent substance with a content of = 80% (w/w) 4,4'-isopropylidenediphenol that does not contain any impurities at concentration levels that would require a change in existing EU classification for Bisphenol A and that does not contain any impurities at concentration levels that would require a PBT/vPvB assessment of the substance.

All participants in the poll approved of Bayer MaterialScience AG as Lead Registrant for Bisphenol A.

In accordance with the results of the poll, the SIEF for Bisphenol A has been formed and Bayer MaterialScience AG was unanimously elected as Lead Registrant.

If you are a non-dormant pre-registrant but did not indicate agreement with the proposed sameness definition for any of your UUIDs, these UUIDs will not be members of the SIEF for Bisphenol A. In this case it will be assumed that these UUIDs have no intention to cooperate in the SIEF and in order to avoid any unnecessary e-mail traffic, these UUIDs will not be included in any further SIEF communication. However, any UUIDs that are currently not members of the SIEF but intend to join the SIEF are welcome to contact the Lead Registrant or the Bisphenol A consortium secretariat indicating that they agree with the above sameness definition. Those UUIDs will then become members of the SIEF for 4,4'-isopropylidenediphenol and will be included in further SIEF communication.