Highlights from BFPA’s 2024 AGM and Conference

22 May 2024

BFPA’s 38th AGM was held on 16 May 2024 at the excellent Hilton at St George’s Park in Burton Upon Trent and was attended by over 50 BFPA members. BFPA President, Rebecca Galley of Hydroscand Limited chaired the BFPA AGM and delivered the BFPA Presidents’ report and Peter Willson of Hopespare Limited was represented the BFPA Distributor Council and chaired the 35th BFPA Distributor AGM. Chris Butcher, Managing Director of BFPA made a presentation highlighting BFPA’s key achievements and activities over the last year.

Photo (LtoR): Swapnil Khedekar, Festo, Rebecca Galley, Hydroscand Ltd, Peter Willson, Hopespare Ltd, Chris Butcher, BFPA.

Rebecca thanked outgoing Board members and welcomed four new candidates to the Board from May 2024: Peter Rowbottom (Gates Hydraulics), Darren Meakin (Manuli Hydraulics), Richard Maulkinson (Prevost UK Limited) and Adrian Farnham (Camozzi Automation). For a full BFPA Board list click here.

New BFPA Distributor Council members elected were: David Farquharson (Enermech Limited), Gavin Hodges (BIBUS UK Limited), Christopher Donegan (Aircare Corby Limited Trading As OMC), Ross Cunningham (R&G Fluid Power Group) and Sam Scothern (Hayley Group).

Jerry Hughes, Chairman of BFPA’s Technical and Standards Policy Committee, presented a BFPA Technical Award to Andy Mustoe of MP Filtri UK Limited for his contribution to BFPA Technical Committee MCE 18/6 Contamination Control.

Photo (LtoR): Andy Mustoe, MP Filtri UK Ltd and Jerry Hughes, Jemlyn Ltd

Martin Kingsbury, BFPA’s Membership and Training Director made two presentations to BFPA’s latest Approved training Providers: MAKE UK and R&G Fluid Power Group.

Photo (LtoR): Martin Kingsbury, BFPA, Terri Holtom, MAKE UK	Photo (LtoR): Martin Kingsbury, BFPA, Ross Cunningham, R & G Fluid Power Group

Supporting presentations were made by Dr Becky Bolton of Innovate UK Connect and Martin Nwangwa of Innovate UK Growth which highlighted the various schemes open to companies for support on R&D and business improvement projects.

Alison Heppenstall of Climate Action for Associations (CAFA) then made a presentation entitled “The Path to Net Zero”, highlighting the mission of her organisation: to decarbonise the membership sector. BFPA is working closely with CAFA to raise awareness and assist its members in accelerating sustainability by climate leadership and action internally, in order to meet future legislation in this field and reduce carbon emissions.

BFPA hosted an enjoyable networking dinner in the evening and the following day CAFA ran a workshop on Sustainability, a core element of which was to launch the BFPA carbon calculator and other resources available to BFPA members.