ATIEL hosts first Information Seminar

December 2011

Representatives from across ATIEL’s membership attended the association’s first industry Information Seminar in December to engage in debate around the impact that transport and energy policies, new technologies and the migration of manufacturing to emerging markets are having on the European lubricants industry.

More than 50 people from member companies, plus invited external guest speakers, came together in Brussels for the event, organised as part of the association’s annual General Assembly (GA).

“Our intention was to make the GA more relevant, interesting and worthwhile and so attract and engage a larger cross-section of our membership, including senior company representatives that would not normally attend ATIEL events,” says Peter Tjan, president of ATIEL (above right).

“For the seminar we invited a strong line-up of relevant external speakers from the European Commission (EC) and automotive industry to give their perspective on the many changes going on in our industry.”

The speakers at the seminar were:

• Barbara Sellier, policy officer, EC Directorate-General for Energy
• Jan Szulczyk, policy coordinator, EC Directorate-General for Transport
• Neville Jackson, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer for Ricardo plc
• Lars Holmqvist, Chief Executive Officer of the European Association of Automotive Suppliers
• Philip Gott, Managing Director of IHS Automotive Consulting
• Chris Locke, Automotive Lubricants Business Manager, Infineum

(click on link to download presentation where available) 

“We selected our speakers specifically to highlight issues such as how the future of EU climate, energy and transport policies, plus the general shift of manufacturing towards emerging economies, are going to affect our business and that of our customers,” says Tjan. “We hope to start a debate around ATIEL’s role in addressing these issues and how we organise ourselves to carry out this task efficiently and professionally.

“We need more and diversemember company staff to become involved in ATIEL and therefore the presence of some of the senior company representatives was important to us.”

He says the concept of the Information Seminar was well received and feedback on the structure and content very positive, including suggestions for a theme for next year’s event.