World Bunkering > News > Winter 2010 > Chief Executive's Report

Ian Adams

Annual Convention

This year’s event was a great success with members yet again coming from all over the world to meet old friends as well as new. Please see the report later in this edition for full details. As the attendees at Stamford heard, next year’s event will be returning to Europe for the first time since 2006 and will be held in the fantastic city of Barcelona, Spain. More information will appear very soon, both here in World Bunkering and on the website. I would encourage members to visit the website as it is increasingly becoming the source of all sorts of IBIA related information. This includes event announcements, press releases and information from IMO.

Annual Dinner

As has become the tradition, this edition of World Bunkering has the details of next year’s Annual Dinner. Following this year’s record attendance, we have decided to change the venue and have moved the Dinner to the Grosvenor House, a JW Marriott Hotel, just up the road from the previous venue on Park Lane, London. We hope to see even more people attending what has become one of the largest events in bunkering, currently only second to SIBCON.

International Maritime Organization (IMO)

IBIA continues to attend regular meetings of IMO and endeavours to keep our members fully briefed about the latest developments. At the most recent meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee a paper submitted by Norway and InterTanko caused a flurry of activity for IBIA. Our initial response was to hold some meetings at IMO and as a result of these meetings IBIA made an oral intervention after the introduction of the paper. Full details of the paper and the IBIA intervention have been circulated to all members. We have now held an internal meeting and are in the process of generating a paper to be submitted to the Bulk Liquids and Gases (BLG) subcommittee to which the previous paper has been referred.

Members’ Details

After the circulation of the e-mail about the above, a number of members of IBIA Committees contacted the Administration to say they had not received the e-mail. I would therefore urge all members to check their contact details on the IBIA website. This is our central database and is how we communicate with Members. If your details are correct then please also check your “spam” filter. We want all of our members to receive our communications as feedback is extremely important to us. It is also important for members to receive these communications as they are an important benefit to members.

BIMCO/IBIA Guide to Bunkering

SIBCON saw the launch of our latest publication, which was produced jointly with BIMCO. It is a simple guide designed to be placed on ships to give ship’s crew a better idea of the basic issues surrounding bunkering. BIMCO intend this to be an electronic download and it will also be available as a free download to IBIA Members. However, we have also decided to make one print run to enable us to issue one copy to all of our members. It should be in the same envelope as this edition of World Bunkering, along with the Calendar, Annual Report and the Membership Book.

Board Elections

This edition also contains the information regarding the Board Elections. We have three vacancies this year and are seeking nominations. The Elections will be conducted in time for the results to be announced at the Annual General Meeting in London prior to the Dinner. The successful candidates take up their seat in April 2011. Last year we had a very large interest which made the task of the Board Development Committee quite a challenge. It is important that we get new faces and new ideas on the Board and I hope for a similar number of nominations this year!

Ian Adams