Major Milestones Reached Towards a Stronger Eurobitume
- Formation of new Membership criteria and categories expands the scope and options now available for interested stakeholders to join Eurobitume
- Agreement on a new organisational structure allows for the integration of national associations into Eurobitume, creating a more powerful network and effective voice to represent the bitumen industry at both central European and local national levels
Membership scope extended
The changes to the existing Membership criteria widened the scope for potential new core members, and an additional category of ‘Associate Member’ was also created.
Eurobitume Director General Aimé Xhonneux explained: “This opens up Eurobitume to engaging with an increased number of stakeholders with a credible interest in the European bitumen industry - such as product transporters, additive and equipment suppliers, testing services organisations and academic institutions - as potential new members. There is a special promotional offer available to new members in the first year.”
Local representations
The ‘new’ Eurobitume has a framework to integrate and extend its work at a local level through the creation of Local Representations - a concept already proved successful with the existing representations for Benelux and Switzerland. The industry will benefit from a stronger overall organisation, whilst maintaining the very important interfaces with local stakeholders.
The first new Local Representation was successfully formed at the start of 2015 and is known as Eurobitume UK, superseding the Refined Bitumen Association (RBA) – which had served the UK bitumen supply industry since 1968. ”The transition to Eurobitume UK has been very smooth and the positive feedback received from our local stakeholders has been encouraging“, said Eurobitume UK manager Chris Southwell.