Some of the E-mails circulating to Pre-SIEF listed companies are genuinely from industry leaders who intend to organise the Pre-SIEF and to continue to lead the industry to conclude the Registration dossiers in compliance with REACh. However, other E-mails are from unknown speculators without a track record of manufacture or industry involvement, who intend to make money from REACh and unwitting companies on the address lists of various Pre-SIEFs.

Companies receiving E-mails may check the validity of the sender against: (a) established consortium leaders’ details for the substance the Pre-SIEF is for; or (b) established European trade association and/or European federation contacts.

In the case of non-ferrous metals, please check E-mail senders against the Eurometaux REACh Metals Gateway at: http://www.reach-metals.eu/

In the case of ferrous metals, please check that messages are endorsed by EUROFER.

As certain key consortium and SIEF leaders have already invested heavily in communication software in order to manage Pre-SIEF/SIEFs, responses by individual Pre-SIEF listed companies to offers of REACh-tailored management or communication services should be treated with much caution.

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) advises in its news alert of 13 February that "The REACH Regulation leaves the management of SIEFs to industry" and goes on to tell companies that they "should also decide what role they wish to take in the SIEFs." ECHA provides a "SIEF – Key Principles" document at: http://echa.europa.eu/doc/reachit/sief_key_principles.pdf

Obviously industry compliance with the European REACh Regulation is most economically efficient if done in a co-operative and non-profit way to keep compliance costs to the minimum. Bona-fide established trade associations and federations will likely already be assisting their members to comply with REACh.

BIR, the world federation of recycling industries, as well as the European Trade Federations EFR and EUROMETREC, respectively for ferrous and non-ferrous metals recovery and recycling, are currently working in cooperation with other trade federations to ensure the relief promised in the REACh Regulation's Article 2(7)(d) to recyclers is achieved in practice.

BIR encourages its European members to check out the web based information at: http://former.bir.org/reach.asp

ends

For further information please contact:

Mr Ross Bartley

Environmental & Technical Director

BIR

Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 24

1050 Brussels, Belgium

Tel: +32 2 627 57 70, Fax:+32 2 627 57 73

www.bir.org