James Clark, Secretary-General of BITA, looks back on a year which included the appointment of the new BITA Technical Manager, and forward to 2018.

James Clark
Secretary-General, BITA

This year began with the appointment of David Goss as our Technical Manager, replacing Bob Hine who retired at the end of February. Following his retirement Bob was honoured with a Special Industry Award from our sister organisation in the United States, the Industrial Truck Association (ITA), for his work in the development of international forklift safety standards.

David settled into his new role very quickly, and is playing a key role as a commentator in many of our media articles, as well as representing BITA members’ interests in the US and at European level, for example arguing for the retention of the CE mark and the common standards which underpin it.

February also brought the retirement of longstanding BITA member and former twotime President, David Rowell after a remarkable total of over 44 years in the industry. BITA Board members, Mike Mathias and Barry Langsford, also stood down, with Simon Munn, Victoria Hutson and Mike Barton all taking up new roles.

As usual our bi-annual Oxford Economics Forklift Truck Market Outlook reports, detailed overviews of sector by sector performance in terms of forklift product categories and customer business divisions, were published.

At the time the second report of the year was issued I used the expression ‘a rollercoaster of sentiment among members’, and looking across the last four reports: optimism high in May 2016, taking a dip in the Autumn report that year, optimism returning in the Spring 2017 report, only to dip again in the most recent report, it is easy to see why.

David Goss, Technical Manager, BITA.

These changing sentiments perhaps reflect the continuing political and economic uncertainty we are living through at the moment – which brings me to Brexit. This dominated the year – and I am sure will dominate 2018. June 2017 marked one year on from the vote to leave the European Union and the decision, the ramifications of which are slowly emerging, will of course have an impact on the logistics and materials handling sector.

So will it be ‘Deal or No Deal’? WTO terms, or some sort of arrangement that will continue to secure access to the Single Market? No one knows. For us our technical work goes on, and we continue to use our global technical insight and influence to not only minimise Brexit’s impact, but also to pursue the most favourable UK trading conditions in the new environment it will bring.

BITA

01344 623 800

james.clark@bita.org.uk

www.bita.org.uk

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