European REACH Grease Thickeners Consortium

Structure and consultancy support

The Consortium consists of the Assembly, with the members also participating in the relevant Task Forces for the substances they intend to register.

The Assembly

The Assembly is the decision-making body of the consortium and has representatives on it from all member companies in the ERGTC. The Task Forces are sub-groups containing specific companies with an interest in registering substances within a given category. The Task Forces oversee the preparation of the REACH dossiers for the specific substances within the category, with substances grouped into categories based on their common chemistry.

The Consortium employs wca as technical consultants and the Consortium’s Technical Working Group provide technical oversight, guidance and expertise. The Consortium management is undertaken by wca and the Consortium’s Project Management Working Group oversee the administrative and management activities.

Agreement has been reached on a Constitution to which all members have signed up and which is the basis for the co-operation of all the members. To facilitate operation of the consortium and to handle financial and legal transactions within the consortium, a foundation has been established in the Netherlands under Dutch law (known as a "Stichting"). wca is happy to provide more information on how this operates to any prospective member.

Members

The members come from a wide range of companies either manufacturing and/or importing grease thickeners in/into the European Union. The list of Consortium members is available on the Downloads page.

The ERGTC welcomes applications from any interested parties. Membership of the consortium is open to any company with interests in the manufacture/import of substances used as grease thickeners. If you are interested in joining the Consortium, please contact wca (ERGTC@wca-consulting.com).

Task Forces

The Task Forces oversee the preparation of the REACH dossiers for the specific substances within the category, with substances grouped into categories based on their common chemistry.

If you would like to purchase a letter of access for any of these substances or would like to purchase access to data used in these registrations for read across purposes, please contact wca (ERGTC@wca-consulting.com).

The substance lists for each of the current ERGTC Task Forces are available here:

• Aluminium fatty acids complexes
• Calcium salts of monocarboxylic acids C14-C22
• Lithium salts of monocarboxylic acids C14-C22
• Lithium salts of dicarboxylic acids C6-C10
• Polyureas
• Terephthalamates
• Naphthenates
• Lithium isooctadecanoate

Other task forces may be formed as the projects progress. The Naphthenate Task Force is a joint Task Force under the ERGTC which is run in association with the Additive Technical Committee (ATC).

For further information on these Task Forces and the substances handled by the ERGTC, please contact wca (ERGTC@wca-consulting.com).

The Borates Task Force is also a joint Task Force. It is run by the ATC in association with the ERGTC. The contact for borates based grease thickeners is Helen Kean (helen.kean@anthesisgroup.com)