The future and chromium(VI)
Granting of the first major upstream authorisation
Now that ECHA has come around to the first major upstream authorization of chromium(VI) three years after the sunset date, the associated requirements are anything but easy to meet. In addition, there is troubling news coming from Brussels.
It has been more than ten years now since the waves around the authorization of chromium(VI) began to run high - chromic acid was included on Annex XIV of the REACH Regulation and thus classified as an SVHC, or substance of very high concern. It was foreseeable that the resulting need to authorize the use of chromic acid would have a serious impact on the electroplating industry. Even a court case and expert opinions showing that the data used to justify the inclusion of chromic acid in Annex XIV had been compiled in an arbitrary and purposive manner could not turn back the clock. Political will was strong and companies that relied on the use of chromium (VI) had no choice but to seek authorization.
Individual authorization offers long durations of protection, up to 12 years, as has been shown, because it can be tailored very specifically to the individual case. However, for the majority of the electroplating companies concerned, such individual authorizations were and are not feasible, both in terms of cost and in terms of the number of people required. As a result, two organizations were founded in March 2012 to pave the way for users of chromium(VI) to obtain authorization, Vecco e.V. and the CTAC consortium. Both Vecco and CTAC began collecting information for the REACH Authorization Application (AfA). Then in 2015, CTACsub, which had emerged from the CTAC consortium, submitted their upstream applications based on the AfAs developed by CTAC. Between 2012 and 2020, the total cost of the permits was around four million euros - without much of this sum reflecting the effort of the companies and staff involved. The European Commission subsequently took more than four years for the review, even exceeding by three years the self-imposed sunset date of September 2017, until authorization was granted in December 2020 for the application submitted by the CTACSub-consortium. The conditions, however, are tough!