2013 REACH registration: results of the ECHA survey conducted on SMEs

For the 2010 and 2013 REACH registration deadlines, the amount of dossiers submitted by SMEs amounted to 14% and 20%, respectively. In this light, ECHA surveyed the experience of first-time 2013 SME registrants (i.e., companies submitting dossiers for the 2013 registration deadline without having ever appeared to ECHA as a registrant before and having declared themselves SMEs) in meeting a number of registration-related challenges – from operating in a SIEF to finding information and guidance to using the submission IT tools.

For this purpose, ECHA submitted a questionnaire to a total of 705 such registrants. ECHA received evidence that the questionnaire was successfully transmitted to 667 of these. 143 companies responded. The response rate of 21.4% provides for a sufficient pool of replies to be of statistical value, even for the questions broken down according to different cohorts, in particular the breakdown between lead registrants and SIEF member registrants.

The outcome of the survey is available in the following ECHA report: