Kettering (UK) – SATRA’s Chemical and Analytical Technology group has almost doubled its turnover over the past 5 years, according to a release today. The main product sector SATRA serves are footwear, furniture, toys and personal protective equipment (PPE), and “a sizeable portion of the chemistry team’s business is testing in accordance with restricted substances legislation”, the release said.

“Within Europe, this is mainly driven by REACH (Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006) and the innocuousness requirements for PPE as part of the certification requirements through SATRA’s Notified Body activities.

“A specialist area that has seen major growth is with the assessment of industrial, examination and surgical gloves to determine their level of protection against hazardous chemicals. SATRA can test to the requirements in EN ISO 374-1:2016 so gloves can be certified against this newly published standard. This involves a new requirement to test the degradation of gloves in accordance with EN 374-4:2013 and permeation testing to EN 16523-1:2015. A new area of permeation testing for SATRA in 2016 was testing against chemotherapy drugs to ASTM D6978. Due to the very low detection limits required, SATRA is one of the few laboratories in Europe that can offer this testing service.”

All leather, footwear and leather goods exports to the EU are also subject to REACH requirements. – [http://www.satra.co.uk/]

Durban, SA – The business rescue practitioners handling Sutherland Tannery (Pty) Ltd will have further meetings – later this week and next week – with 2 of a number of parties interested in taking over the business, Neil Button of Stowell & Co. said today.
    He said he hoped they would put in written offers by their deadline of January 21. No decision is expected before January 24.