CEO’s introduction

Welcome to the final IBIA member newsletter of 2017, where we bring you summaries of the main talking points at our Annual Convention along with other important updates, including upcoming IMO discussions we will participate in. As always, we are ready to listen to your views on what IBIA can do to help you in this and other areas, which I will talk about a bit more.

As we approach the end of 2017, I’d like to thank you for supporting IBIA in the past year, and I look forward to continue working with you all in 2018. It’s exciting looking ahead to the New Year!

In 2018, IBIA will be focused on engaging with our members more frequently and in ways that are meaningful to you. We’ve just begun the process of replacing our current, rather dated membership management system with an award-winning Membership Engagement System. This system will also complement the new IBIA website that will be launched in parallel. However, these systems have people at the heart of them and will enable us to serve you much more effectively with your own customised member’s page including connectivity with a range of social media channels and our IBIA Working Groups. The system is intuitive and very user-friendly.

We’re also planning to run many more IBIA events in 2018, in a wider range of locations than before with the intention of growing our global membership. In January we’re in Mauritius, in February it’s time for our well-established Annual Dinner in London, then in March, Tenerife hosts IBIA for our Africa Bunkering Conference, and in April we’re in Jamaica for our Caribbean Bunker Conference as well as in Singapore for the IBIA Asia Annual Dinner. Looking further ahead, we have chosen Copenhagen as the location of next IBIA Annual Convention in November 2018.

Whether we meet face to face or virtually, we recognise that there’s a lot to talk about in our industry right now. Whichever part of the industry you’re from it’s very likely that we can help you manage and understand issues or concerns that you have when it comes to the bunker industry. It’s likely that via our Secretariat or one of our Working Groups that we’ll be able to offer you some form of guidance. Please get in touch if you think that we can help.

My best wishes to you for the upcoming festive season and see you again in the New Year!

Justin Murphy
Chief Executive Officer, IBIA
justin.murphy@ibia.net