ISSA President Welcome
Dear ISSA Friends & Maritime Colleagues:
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 58th ISSA Convention & Trade Exhibition in its new home for the next 3 years: London.
We decided that a static location and known date for the next 3 years was the best way to bring even more attention to, and participation in, the ship supply industry’s premier event.
Our choice of location – on the south side of Westminster Bridge – is in the heart of London and a short stroll to the vibrant water-side South Bank venues of bars, shops, restaurants, music, culture, art and such iconic land marks as The London Eye and Tate Modern.
Our home for Convention is the very new Park Plaza, Westminster Bridge, a unique, circular property that has all the features Convention-goers have come to expect with ISSA.
You will notice several innovations with our venue change including superb networking opportunities with your customers – the London ship owners and ship managers – and unrivalled opportunities for exhibiting your company products and services to delegates from over 50 countries!
There will be fewer formal plenary sessions than usual to maximise the opportunity to “do business”.
But the plenary sessions that we are lining up will be of vital interest to our industry.
Our Keynote Speaker will be Jeremy Penn, Chief Executive of The Baltic Exchange where ISSA has its Secretariat and where much of the world’s bulk cargoes are “fixed”.
We will have input from the International Maritime Organisation, FONASBA (the Ships Agents Association), Intermanager (the ship managers association) as well as ship owners and industry figures all with important things to say that will inform and entertain you.
Our partners accompanying us will be very well looked after with two amazing day visits to Kew Gardens and Hever Castle. Full details are to be found elsewhere on the web site.
It will not be all work and no play – that is not the ISSA way! We have a spectacular Gala Dinner lined up with a 1930s theme which I hope everyone will enter in to the spirit of and enjoy an evocative era of shipping.
All in all ISSA 58 promises to be a vintage ISSA occasion and I am much looking forward to seeing you in London.
Cheers!
Jens Olsen
ISSA President
Welcome by Mr Bob Blake
Chairman of the British Association of Ship Suppliers
Dear ISSA Friends
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by”
With that, one of our most famous poets Laureates, John Masefield, evoked an image of sailing and ships, and salt and tar and....
Well, friends, you get the idea.
So it falls to me to say to you: board your tall ship, find that star to steer your way to England and London and the 58th ISSA Convention & Trade Exhibition.
As Chairman of the British Association of Ship Suppliers (BASS) it is a great pleasure and honour for me to extend the warmest of invitations to friends and colleagues (old and new) from across the globe to what, I promise, will be an event you will recount to your grand-children!
ISSA 58 is the start of a 3 year presence in London for our premier event and once you come in 2013 I just know you will want to visit again and again.
There is so much to do and see in London so don’t plan just to come for a couple of days. Come for the week. Play golf on the world’s oldest golf course. Bring your partner, your children, your mother-in-law! All are welcome. All will be entertained and will experience sights and sounds that will thrill them.
You know ISSA boasts how old the ship supply industry is. The Romans crossed the River Thames 2,000 years ago just up the road from your Convention hotel and I bet a ship supplier or two was right behind them.
So follow in their foot-steps to be at the unique ISSA Convention hosted by your friends in BASS.
See you soon!
Bob Blake
Chairman - BASS