June 2008

BPIF Cartons elects a new Chairman

Mark Kerridge, Chairman for the last three years reported on the year 2007-8 as follows:

1.  
   1. The Executive team has been enlarged and "professionalised" with role statements and job descriptions in place

    

   2. Networking dinners during the course of the year with venues being moved around the country on the principle of giving all members the opportunity to attend at least one reasonably local meeting

    

   3. There were a number of significant events during the course of the year:
      1. Innovation Workshop in Dresden in June hosted by KBA and other suppliers

       

      2. ECMA Congress in September in Portugal attended by a growing number of UK converters

       

      3. Shanghai visit (with other ECMA members) to attend an exhibition and to visit a number of Chinese converters

       

    

   4. A number of projects have been worked on during the year eg SME Benchmarking through ECMA and a carton specific segment of the BPIF’s Technology Warehouse

    

   5. Carton Conference – although it was held in 2008-9, most of the preparatory hard work was done in this year. The conference was a huge success with over 170 delegates and its theme, "Carton Confident" will be taken forward as an industry theme for 2008-9

    

   6. Membership – this has increased yet again with 4 new members and many more in the pipeline

    

   7. Income and expenditure was in line with forecast but this must be kept under constant review as the number of new members is likely to slow down and with it income growth

In accepting the nomination Chris Dew thanked and paid tribute to Mark Kerridge for his three years in office during which BPIF Cartons had gone from a poorly supported organisation to a vibrant and relevant part of the industry. In setting out his objectives for his term as Chairman Chris Dew highlighted the following areas:

1.  
   1. Environment – we would work towards giving our members the knowledge and tools to react to the challenges of the marketplace by ensuring that the BPIF and Pro Carton combine their resources for the benefit of members

    

   2. Training and development – this was identified as an extremely important for the future of the industry. The BPIF will be invited to facilitate a "skills audit" of the industry and with members identify potential solutions and funding streams

    

   3. Supply chain relationships – it was believed that there was unnecessary friction in the supply chain and as an initial exercise it was intended to set up a "brainstorming meeting" for all members of the cartons supply chain from concept to consumer. We intend to work with Faraday Packaging Partnership on the project Other more focussed areas of work should emanate from this exercise

    

   4. Membership growth – in spite of the growth in the last three years it was important to keep the pressure on those "targets" who were not yet members. This would be a collective initiative between Neal Whipp, Committee members and the BPIF sales staff. We should be ambitious and set a target to increase membership by 20% over the next two years

    

The Executive Committee was re-elected en bloc.