The UK’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced that it has committed to “exploring alternative arrangements for UK REACH transitional registrations … in order to support chemical businesses whilst upholding the highest standards to safeguard public health and the environment”.

Following on from the extension of a long-standing supply agreement with Merck & Co. for a proprietary enzyme used in the manufacture of sitagliptin, Codexis has reached a manufacturing agreement with two other firms. Sitagliptin is the API in Merck’s Januvia and one of the APIs in Janumet.

BASF has agreed to partner with China’s SVOLT on the supply of cathode active materials (CAMs), R&D into sustainable battery materials and the ultimate recycling of battery cells. They will also assess joint upstream resourcing to strengthen the security of raw material supply. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Europe's main trade association for chemicals gave a mixed greeting to the European Commissions's new sustainability strategy

The European Commission (EC) has published a new Chemical Strategy for Sustainability and invited the European Parliament and the Council to endorse this and to contribute to its implementation. It envisages revising REACH “in the most targeted way possible”, while also taking other initiatives to improve legislation.

Ten major global chemical sector companies have agreed with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to establish what they called “a breakthrough, pre-competitive development platform to accelerate net-zero climate technologies”. They are BASF, Dow, DSM, Solvay, Clariant, Covestro, Mitsubishi Chemical, Air Liquide, Sabic and Sibur.

ECHA has published advice on how to use the OECD guideline to REACH registrants on how to reliably combine different sources of non-animal data on skin sensitisation properties of their substances. This is the first guideline outlining how to use in silico tools like the QSAR Toolbox for this purpose. Mike Rasenberg, ECHA’s director for hazard assessment, described it as “an important milestone for advancing the use of alternative methods to assess chemical hazards”.

Silicon materials player Elkem has announced a new climate roadmap, detailing how it plans to develop its business in line with the aim of the Paris agreement of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, while also achieving revenue growth of 5-10%/year.