Dear Members and Friends, at the conclusion of our successful 12th Biennial refractory conference the IRE Australasia branch is working hard and planning for 2025 and 2026 to be just as successful. Given our healthy balance sheet, we are able to reinvest in such funds to grow and strengthen our organisation, providing additional value to our members.
At the recent management and state member committee meeting we conducted a review of our latest conference and considered ideas for improvement. In summary, the members appreciated the 5-star hotel, venue, and location. Our keynote speaker and expert panel discussion format was also appreciated. In addition, the biannual frequency hits the mark. Although day two was an excellent plant tour, alternate conferences could schedule the local training day. It was decided that the four-paper session conference format appeared crammed and taking that down to three in the future would mean more time for quality Q&A and networking. We may also bring the timing of the training conference from early December to late October.
I am pleased to advise that our management committee is also being refreshed with Navin Singh accepting the role of membership officer. Wayne Wright takes up the role of training officer. These are important metrics for improvement, since we are quite strong on most of the other fundamentals. The management committee and I want to thank Navin and Wayne for their commitment and contribution.
In terms of training, Wayne has proposed an ambitious schedule of two training days per year. The next eighteen months should see training days in WA in 2025 and 2026, the conference (likely in NSW) and Queensland.
Our other focus will be to keep regenerating our management committee, since this is likely to be my penultimate editorial as president. We welcome talented and experienced individuals to join us and will keep our members updated accordingly. Best always.
Mario Taddeo MI Ref Eng
President, IRE Australasia
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