RoHS services will grow past July 1 deadline

According to an article on the Taipei website, DigiTimes.com, RoHS-related business and services will continue to grow through the third quarter of this year, well past the July 1, 2006 RoHS deadline. At that point, RoHS services are expected to drop slightly and flatten for some time. The article also identifies lingering concerns over testing for compliance.

The article notes there are continuing uncertainties in how European Union governing bodies intend to test for RoHS compliance. There is concern in the market about “homogenous materials,” which technically means a material that cannot be “mechanically disjointed” into different materials.

The RoHS regulation defines maximum allowable contest of restricted substances by homogenous material. This means the limits are not simply applied to the finished product, but to each individual component. Therefore, there is uncertainty about how to prepare samples for testing – when to stop going to the finished products and instead to the component materials level. Clarity on the issue isn’t expected to arrive until well past the RoHS deadline, which means companies will be plenty busy preparing for compliance well beyond July 1.