Dear Friend,
Happy Thursday! It certainly is for us, our email migration has finally gone through successfully, so apologies for anyone who’s had a late email reply.
It’s Day 353 of Lockdown, and we have some urgent information from Heather Thomas of BEIS which came through on Tuesday night.
Urgent info from Heather Thomas of BEIS
Dear All,
Apologies for a follow up email so soon, but please see a few updates below that I didn’t want to wait until Friday to send:
1. Another quick REMINDER – Rules of Origin Q&A sessions – last session will be taking place on Friday 12 March @ 1200-1300 Teams joining link here. You don’t need to sign up. If you’re planning to attend, please add the details to your calendar and then click the link to join the Teams call at the relevant date and time. Reminder that we will not be able to provide definitive judgements on whether a particular company’s products qualify as originating or not – only the company involved can do that – but the aim is rather for us to help people navigate the relevant rules so they can come to their own conclusions. .
2. SME Brexit Fund – the application portal will go live this coming Monday – 15th March.
3. BPDG bulletin (5 March) – apologies I wasn’t able to include it in Friday’s email – please now see attached.
ROI and NI movements
1. Moving goods to the Republic of Ireland: [NEW] Irish Customs have introduced some additional functionality for those using the Pre-Boarding Notifications service – providing text and email updates for channel routings for loads. For more information, click here.
2. The UK Trader Scheme (UKTS): The UKTS authorisation was brought in from December to help ensure traders do not pay tariffs on the movement of goods into Northern Ireland from Great Britain when they are for end use or sale in the United Kingdom. An easement announced end last week (updated guidance here) means that:
- The period in which traders can be authorised to declare good not ‘at risk’ without having their own fixed address in Northern Ireland has been extended until 1 November 2021.
- Businesses who have already received provisional authorisation using the easement now have until 1 November 2021 to meet the UKTS establishment criteria.
- Businesses that submit a UKTS application from 1 March onwards will also have until 1 November 2021 to meet the UKTS establishment criteria.
3. Declaring goods you bring into Northern Ireland not ‘at risk’ of moving to the EU: [UPDATED] Guidance has been updated with information about making a declaration based on expected outcomes. Further information about rules of origin requirements and preferential rates when bringing goods into Northern Ireland has also been added. For more information, clickhere.
4. Movement Assistance Scheme (MAS) expanded to support organic produce: Traders moving organic products to Northern Ireland are now eligible for support following the expansion of a scheme designed to ease the flow of agri-food goods from Great Britain. For more information about this announcement click here, and for more information on the new scheme, click here.
Net zero
- Net zero event for SMEs – in case you have not received this already, you may be interested in the email attached about details of a “Your business journey to Net Zero” event, targeted at SMEs in the North of England and taking place on Friday19th March from 09:40-16:20. The attached email has more details. For ease of reference, the registration link is here.
- Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) launches next Phase 1 funding opportunity – you may have received already from other colleagues in the Chemicals Team, but just in case, BEIS, in collaboration with Innovate UK, has launched the next opportunity to bid for funding from the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) providing up to £40 million of grant funding for energy efficiency projects and studies – for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The competition opened for applications on Monday 8 March and will run until Wednesday 14 July. For more details and how to apply, please see here.
The competition will provide grant funding towards the costs of:
- Deployment of mature energy efficiency technologies that improve industrial process energy efficiency and reduce energy demand.
- Feasibility and engineering studies for projects deploying mature energy efficiency technologies or deep decarbonisation technologies.
All projects must relate to improvements to an existing industrial process at a manufacturing site or data centre. Following stakeholder feedback, the minimum thresholds for grant applications have been lowered such that:
- the minimum grant companies can receive for energy efficiency deployment projects will be £100,000.
- the total eligible costs for engineering studies must be at least £50,000.
- the total eligible costs for feasibility studies must be at least £30,000.
The Scottish Government is administering its share of the funding contributing to a £34 million budget for the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (SIETF), which was launched recently. For more information on the Scottish IETF, please email IETF@gov.scot.
Many thanks as always to Heather for her support. As usual for information from the regulators, this newsletter is set as open access, so please share this page with anyone who may find it useful.
ECHA error message: admission of problems with REACH registration dossiers and the infocard
Found on their website yesterday, this warning message:
NB: Registration status and tonnage
- The REACH Registered substance portal was updated on 9th November 2020; the REACH registered factsheets were further updated on 21st December 2020. Details of the improvements can be found at Dissemination Platform Updates. Reprocessing the entire dataset is ongoing since 21 December 2020. ECHA is making all possible efforts to synchronise the registration status and tonnage with the shortest delay.
- While reprocessing is ongoing please note that substances whose registration dossiers are not yet processed can incorrectly state in the Infocard that they are not registered under REACH. In these cases if there is a link to a REACH registered substance factsheet then the substance IS registered. The correct total tonnage band can be found in the factsheet(s) for the substance.
About time too, what they’re not telling us is that this has been ongoing since last summer, when the links between the REACH dossiers and the C&L inventory were broken.
Process Safety corner
A shorter version of Process Safety Corner than usual, but still very important: there was a dreadful accident which resulted in a man being scalded by boiling water when he attempted to pour it into a vessel which had been pressurised.
Although the company concerned have been fined, this will not bring back his health. See https://press.hse.gov.uk/2021/03/01/chemical-manufacturing-company-fined-after-employee-scalded-with-boiling-water/ .
Reasons to be cheerful
Our Big Bang Theory clip today is: Sheldon tries to teach Penny a “little” physics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUGXcuKbGlc
(thanks to Binny Todd of White Sea and Baltic for the suggestion!).
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to the newsletter today. As usual, if you have anything you’d like to share, please email me and I’ll do my best to include it in the next newsletter.
Kind regards,
Janet
Janet Greenwood
TT Environmental Ltd