Turkey’s environment ministry has prepared a draft proposal to extend the end-December deadline for registrations under KKDIK by between two and four years, heeding intense calls from stakeholders which have struggled to meet the REACH-like requirements, according to industry sources.
At a high-level meeting with industry representatives on 19 October, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change (MoEUCC) confirmed its plan to postpone registrations and stagger the deadlines according to tonnage, the sources told Chemical Watch News & Insight.
The proposal, pending the ministry’s approval, will most likely delay the deadline by two years to December 2025 for substances above 1,000 tonnes, followed by an additional one year – to December 2026 – for those between 100-1,000 tonnes, and another year – to December 2027 – for those between 1-100 tonnes, the sources said.
The 2025 deadline will also apply to carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) substances of one tonne per year or more, and substances that are very toxic to aquatic life of 100 tonnes or more per year, according to the plan.
Currently, KKDIK has a single registration deadline of December 2023 for all substances.
The information is preliminary, the sources said, and some changes and additional information may still follow. The official revision is expected to be published by the MoEUCC by the end of October.
The MoEUCC did not respond to a request for comment.
The extension comes after Cefic, at a roundtable meeting of trade representatives and government officials in July, called for a minimum two-year extension to KKDIK registrations and staggered submission dates until end-2029 based on tonnage band and hazard category.
Cefic’s plea, endorsed by Turkish industry associations, came as issues over data access and lead registrant nominations continued to cripple the registration process despite efforts by the ministry to ease them. This has kept submission numbers extremely low.
Only 1,400 chemicals had been registered by the summer, with an estimated 7,000 others still expected to materialise.
Cefic’s proposal was inspired by the UK’s decision to extend its registration deadlines, which are also staggered, under its post-Brexit independent REACH law.
The Turkish ministry will also publish its long-awaited list of SVHCs subject to authorisation from the end of 2023, according to a blog entry today from CRAD consultancy. From 2025 onwards, companies will not be able to put SVHCs on the market without an authorisation for use, it said.