REACH and CARL BECHEM

Over the past few years there have been very intense and in part very polemic discussions about REACH. There was a severe dispute about sense and nonsense of REACH as well as about innumerable details of the planned legislation between the EU Commission, the environmental associations and industry. Now REACH has become reality. The existing regulations are, of course, a compromise between the parties involved which could not be more different.

While others still continued their discussions and struggled against REACH, we have started our preparations to REACH. We explicitly welcome the two main targets of REACH:

• Improved protection of man and nature against hazardous chemicals
• intensified innovation of the European chemical industry and related sectors, e.g. the lubricant industry

REACH thus guarantees the sustainable development of the chemical industry and our entire society - and this not only in Germany, but all over Europe and beyond. A company which can look back on a more than 170 year old history really knows the meaning of sustainability. Without a company's policy which concentrates on sustainability we would not be able to fulfil our customers' high requirements over such a long time.

REACH explicitly enhances innovations. Many regulations of REACH shall help the company to promote innovations on the market: The elimination of the differentiation between old and new substances as well as the exception for the R & D substances, just to name two of them. This is the reason why we inaugurated our InnovationCenter in 2006 which combines all our R & D activities. As medium size family owned company, which finds its strength for the future from its long history, the targets of REACH have a positive effect on our activities.

For our customers this means that they can rely on us and our products also in the future. Across all sectors and across our complete product range.