Chairman report 2005

Dear BFS member,

As we are started a new year, 2006, I am reflecting on the activities we have had during 2005. Our first meeting of the year was the Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Barcelona, Spain. For the first time, we tried to implement a voting procedure via e-mail, to make it easier for members not being present at the AGM to cast their votes. This “first-time-out” we did not expect too many members to use this possibility, and we were quite right in our expectations. Despite this, we will continue having this possibility, and I hereby urge any companies not sending representatives to the AGM to please use their rights to vote. It is important that we can take decisions in the intended way, i.e. that we have active members casting votes. Please observe, that in larger companies where many people are listed as contact persons by our Association, that you must agree on the vote amongst yourself before sending in your vote. Let me clarify that the BFS IOA membership is a company membership, so that one company (a legal entity paying one membership fee) is entitled to one vote, but that you can send any number of employees to any of the yearly meetings.

There have been some confusion regarding the topic of the membership fee´s, and the board will therefore send out personal letters to our primary contact persons explaining the details during Jan-06.

In October, we had our yearly US-meeting, and for a change, we decided to place our meeting on the West Coast of US, in beautiful Napa Valley. Dey Lab (situated in Napa), helped tremendously in our arrangements and kindly sponsored a very memorable dinner in the wine cellars of a famous local wine maker. A local FDA inspector (Mr. Carl Lee) also visited this meeting, to learn more about BFS technology. Dey also showed their BFS facility, a very appreciated visit among many of the attendees.

Our Asian meeting this year was located in Pune, about half an hour flight inland from Mumbai. Here Fresenius Kabi helped us organizing the meeting. For the third year in a row, we had Dr. Venkateswarlu, the Deputy Inspector General of India visiting our meeting, and as usual, contributing to our discussions. We have now had Asian meetings in India since 2001 (New Delhi), so the suggestion for next year is to place the Asian meeting outside India, but to promote our important Indian members to sign up also for the 2006 meeting by providing cost-efficient group bookings to wherever we decide to place this meeting (possibly Australia).

In September, a revision of Annex 1 was published, and Eric will tell you more about this in his Technical Officer report. The PDA now has an essentially new management, with Robert Myers as President, and we are in discussions with them to see how we best can draw advantages of each other’s organizations.

Finally, I would like you all to join me in a big thank you to our sponsors. We cannot function or provide you with yearly meetings in every region without their kind support.

Our Global Sponsors are:

  • Huntsman Polymers Corp.
  • Weiler Engineering
  • Rommelag

In addition, the following companies have helped us at specific meetings:

  • Rommelag
  • Weiler Engineering
  • Wilco
  • Seidenader
  • Dey Lab, USA
  • Pharmaplan, India
  • Fresenius Kabi, India

I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of my fellow board members, their dedicated secretaries and our Appointed Officers (+ local supports from sponsoring companies). It is hard work to arrange our meetings, and we are dependant on your support.

Our next meeting will be our AGM 2006, probably by end March, in France. Keep an eye out on our homepage. Finally, I do hope that you have experienced a good start on this New Year and that it will become a prosperous one for you. I do hope to see you all at our meetings in 2006.

Anders Löfgren
Chairman, BFS IOA