Comment by BVAA Director Rob Bartlett

‘The best BVAA Team you’ve ever had.’  

This was the title of a recent letter that I sent to our members, and I stand by every word of it. 

You see Trade Associations are not all the same, and I’ve seldom seen one that offers such a broad and comprehensive range of quality services as the BVAA. The members of the association are also extraordinarily blessed with a hugely talented and wonderfully committed secretariat team. 

We’ve made additions to our well-known core over the last year or so, in Marketing and Events, and all these consummate professionals are working incredibly hard for our cherished members and clients. So much so, we’ve recently expanded our administrative team to keep up!

The range and quality of the marketing and promotional outlets we have now for members – many of which are still free of charge where we can – has grown substantially. We’ve successfully reintroduced special print copy issues of Valveuser, and we’ve boosted our Linked-In followers by over 25%. We have strategies for yet further growth going forward, a new valveuser website, and a superb and completely re-vamped BVAA website has also just been completed, see www.bvaa.org.uk.

Last year, the BVAA Events were some of the best we’ve ever had, and we have continued to expand the number and variety of exhibitions we support. We’ve had two brilliants shows in Valve World Dusseldorf and IVS in Bergamo, plus we maintained a very strong presence at various UK events such as Fluid Power, ChemUK, etc. Not forgetting of course, the welcome return, after Covid restrictions, of our unique and extremely popular Desktop Exhibitions, where we even added some new hosts. We will expand still further our presence at national and international shows in 2023.

The BVAA Gala Ball in November was the highlight of the year, seeing the second-largest attendance in our history. We released into the industry our 5^th Cohort of Future Leaders – arguably the best yet – and recently commenced our 6^th cohort’s journey to enhanced leadership potential. The early signs are they’re looking pretty special too!

Our Technical Team have gone from strength-to-strength this year, adding the influencing of major Government policy to their list of many successes in developing technical and standards across all fora, while also developing yet more Training courses with new and innovative materials. The ability of a member to call a renowned expert for free, reliable and informed advice remains one of BVAA’s most popular services. Such sound advice - and the unsung heading-off of damaging specs and regulations - saves our members considerable time and money. And yet they are often unaware of it.

Our goal for the coming year is yet more expansion, improvements, a globally rising profile and direct engagement with the members and their customers. The BVAA offer is pretty unique, and we all encourage you to make the best possible use of it!

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