12 leading manufacturers and importers, with wide-ranging experience and know-how in organic pigments have combined their resources in relation to their REACH compliance activities and in February 2009 formed 7 consortia to cover a total of 43 pigments.

Consortium description

Substances covered
The 43 substances, which are intended to be registered under the REACH legislation by 1 December 2010, are covered in 7 Organic Pigment REACH consortia. The substances covered in the Organic Pigments consortia can be found in the Organic Pigments substances list.

Membership
Each of the 7 consortia comprises a Steering Committee and Technical Committee, managed by the Lead Company and in case of the multi-substances consortia by ReachCentrum. Each consortium is open, at any time, to SIEF manufacturers, importers and only representatives, as defined in the REACH Regulation, or their affiliates, of a substance on its own, in preparations or in articles and which is subject to REACH Regulation registration requirements.

Membership is open to any registrant fulfilling the membership criteria, and who is willing to play an active role in the work of the consortium. A preliminary requirement is that any prospective new member of a consortium signs a secrecy agreement regarding use of information and data held by the consortium, to enable a decision to be made on membership. A copy of the model initial secrecy agreement can be accessed here.

Consortium activities
Consortium members already own many studies required for the dossiers. By using all REACH Regulation options (e.g. jointly-funded testing, grouping, read-across, data waiving, Joint Submission), each consortium aims to prepare its registration dossier in the most cost- and resource-effective way.

As a cost-effective alternative to consortium membership, each consortium is offering other interested SIEF members access to its completed Registration dossier, in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory way, as part of a Joint Submission. The consortium will contact other SIEF members as soon as it has finalized its dossier. This will be in good time for the opportunity to be considered and decisions made by SIEF members to join the consortium’s Joint Submission, well before the 1 December 2010 deadline. As an alternative to consortium membership or to participation in the consortium’s Joint Submission, individual SIEF members may be interested in purchasing a consortium member´s studies. In such a case, the relevant owner of the study of interest should be contacted directly.

Consortium status reports
As part of the communications to members of SIEFs for the substances covered by the four consortia, regular reports on progress and status of the activities of each of the consortia will be published on this page.

• Technical Committee Meetings of all consortia were held on 22 - 23 January 2009.
• Consortia Agreements were signed in February 2009.
• 1st Steering Committee Meetings were held on 25 - 26 February 2009.
• 2nd Steering Committee Meetings were held on 1 - 2 July 2009.
• Working plan for each consortium are approved, all timelines are on time for phase 1 registration in 2010.
• All members’ data has been compiled and literature searches have been completed.
• Evaluation of data is well-advanced and near completion.
• The task of creating robust study summaries is close to finalisation.
• A major international pigment producer has joined the Diarylide Yellow Pigment, the Copper Phthalocyanine Pigment and the Metal Lake Pigments Consortia. Another international pigment manufacturer has joined the Copper Phthalocyanine Pigment Consortium and is in discussions on membership of other consortia.
• Discussions are in hand with other potential new members of the consortia, which are at various stages of finalisation.
• 3rd Steering Committee meetings were held on 27-29 January 2010
• Consortia have agreed the process for communication with SIEF members on the purchase of letters of access to the joint registration dossiers for 2010, or for later registration dates up to May 2018. The first communication will be sent to SIEF members during March 2010. More detailed information, including costs and the scope of the joint dossier, will be provided to those SIEF members who respond accordingly. This follow-up information will be provided no later than 30 April 2010 (please note each consortium will be communicating in accordance with their own time-lines, all of which will be within the dates mentioned above).

Contact the Organic Pigments consortia
If you require further information on the activities of the Organic Pigment REACH Consortia, in addition to issues that the consortia will be covering in the communications to SIEF members (see the final indent in the Status Report above), please contact the email addresses below, mentioning 'organic pigments' in the subject line.

For multi-substances consortia, please contact consortium@reachcentrum.eu

For single-substance consortia, please contact pa.consortia@clariant.com