In May ESA organises a Materials and Processes Technology Board stakeholder day at ESTEC, in the Netherlands, focused on REACH obsolescence risk and supply chain management.

To address challenges of the REACH regulation, especially to understand those faced by smaller companies, the Materials and Processes Technology Board invites for an open stakeholder day.

The European REACH regulation controls the manufacturing, market placement and use of chemical substances in Europe through the processes of registration, authorisation, and restriction. The large number of substances requiring authorisation for continuous use, as well as the strict rules and high costs involved to seek such authorisation consequently lead to disappearance of substances from the market or result in changes of materials and processes formulations. The most imminent risk is the obsolescence of qualified materials, processes or technologies and costly mitigation actions if identified at a later stage of space projects. Other challenges include the declaration of hazardous substances (REACH article 33) for complex hardware.

‘’The complexity of the issue and its possible industrial impact requires European-wide coordination among space industry and agencies’’ says Thomas Rohr, adding that this complex task is being realised thanks to the Materials and Processes Technology Board (MPTB). Large system integrators, equipment manufacturers, expert companies, national space agencies and ESA participate to the board.

That day aims at establishing a communication network between MPTB members and smaller companies, SMEs, and academia, involved in hardware manufacturing for space programmes to address the following questions:

  • What are the needs and challenges in the area of materials and processes for stakeholders in the European space sector?
  • How can we improve to share information and feed innovation effectively across the European space sector?
  • Where can the MPTB provide support and how can we establish a functional communication network?

To know more about REACH and its implications for the European space activities, we would suggest you to read our previous post covering these aspects

If you are interested in participating to this one-day event, you can still register on the website: https://indico.esa.int/indico/event/194