pinfa General Assembly
pinfa’s members discussed how industry can address new challenges and information on PIN flame retardants. 29th – 30th November 2025, Vincent Brugge, Vice-President Legal, and Managing Director of ICL Europe, welcomed more than 30 participants (from 17 pinfa member companies), at the company’s European headquarters in Amsterdam. He underlined that chemicals and other foundation industries face make-or-break challenges today, between the need to invest in sustainability and climate, and the challenges of energy prices and imports. For flame retardants, these challenges are particularly acute.
Regulatory, science and industry dialogue
Members were able to engage with Nat Tonge and Claire Massey, UK Environment Agency, who explained ongoing work into identification, risk assessment and exposure monitoring of FRs in the UK (follow-up of Scoping Review, see pinfa Newsletter n°172). This showed the benefit of cooperation with pinfa, which enabled clarification between substances which are indeed PIN flame retardants and substances being used for other reasons (e.g. plasticisers, processing agents).
pinfa members also dialogued with Pim Leonard and Sicco Brandsma, Amsterdam Free University, who reviewed recent publications on organo-phosphorus FRs environmental occurrence and bio-monitoring. This showed a rapidly increasing number of science publications globally, but concentrating on only a handful of FRs, in some cases halogenated. A challenge is that FRs are found everywhere, often at very low levels from background contamination. These levels may not pose health risks, but are often perceived as unacceptable.
Updates covered pinfa’s Working Groups, covering EU regulatory developments, inorganic FRs, melamine-derivatives, phosphorus PIN FRs, recycling, standards, the EU Construction Products Directive and fire safety, ecotaxes, communications actions and events. Several technical studies are being undertaken or prepared between pinfa, member companies and downstream users. Actions of pinfa North America and pinfa China were presented.
