Atrion First to Deliver Support for EU’s new Regulation on Classification, Labeling and Packaging (CLP) With IA 4.1

Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 20, 2009— Atrion International announces the general availability of Intelligent Authoring’s (IA) Service Pack 2 (SP2) with support for the EU’s new Regulation on Classification, Labeling and Packaging (CLP) of substances and mixtures.
The CLP Regulation—which came into force in January 2009—constitutes the European implementation of the UN’s Globally Harmonized System (GHS) on classification and labeling of chemicals. Atrion’s solution now provides Managed Regulatory Content in support of the new Regulation enabling users to fully automate the creation of CLP-compliant labels and SDS documentation.

“The EU CLP regulation that was published at the end of 2008 will have a dramatic effect on the classification and output of an SDS in Europe as each phase of the regulation is put into force,” said Michelle Gardner, Manager Product Safety & Compliance, Law & Regulatory Affairs at Ecolab. “Each of our products sold in Europe must be re-evaluated against the new CLP criteria and updated accordingly. Prior to implementing the Atrion solution—with significant integration with our other systems—Ecolab had individuals in each country creating and/or translating SDS to ensure local compliance.”

Ms. Gardner further explains that having consistent and compliant documents in a timely fashion is essential to be able to respond to Ecolab’s customer requests as well as to regulatory demands. This is true not only for Europe, but also for enabling the Ecolab business to expand SDS authoring globally in order to comply with each specific GHS implementation—such as the recent GHS movements in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. “Customers continue to become more sophisticated users of SDS and the ability of a chemical manufacturer to adapt to, and adopt new regulations is necessary to stay in the game,” adds Ms. Gardner. “Atrion has become for Ecolab an integrated piece of our compliance processes.”

“At Atrion, we understand that the looming deadlines of December 1st, 2010 for substance classification and June 1st 2015 for mixtures provides process-intensive, chemical-based companies very little time for full CLP compliance,” said Francis Trudeau, Product Manager of Managed Regulatory Content at Atrion International. “That’s why it was imperative that we quickly deliver the IA 4.1 SP2 to facilitate this process for manufacturers that may otherwise find themselves struggling to meet these deadlines. Being at the forefront of changing regulations, Atrion will continue to track the GHS schedule and will add support as additional countries announce their adoption plans.”

About Atrion International
Atrion International Inc., founded in 1989, delivers the most reliable, product compliance solutions for multinational ‘formula-based’ companies. By integrating the largest set of managed regulatory content into a prepackaged automated solution and connecting to key ERP systems, Atrion’s Product Compliance Solution ensures that products will reach customers with minimal risks to brand image and shareholder value. Atrion International is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with offices in the United States and Europe.

For more information about Atrion International, visit www.atrionintl.com.

Atrion Intl. Contact:
Donna Zamiska
Marketing & Communication Manager
4777 Levy Street
St. Laurent, Quebec
Canada H4R 2P9
+1 (514) 337-2114, ext. 226
dzamiska@atrionintl.com

This release was published on openPR.