ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

As Anna Garbagna reports from Italy the AfidampFab industry association has a new president.

Changes at the top for AfidampFab, the association of Italian producers of machines, products and equipment for professional cleaning and hygiene of environments. After the presidency of Matteo Marino, who could not be re-elected after two consecutive mandates, the association assembly has elected the new board of directors. He is Bruno Ferrarese, co-owner of Idrobase, the producer of industrial pressure cleaners and member of AfidampFab since 1998.

The mandate of the newly elected president will focus on three main objectives: strengthening of communication activities, the creation of a multilingual portal in order to enhance the member’s products at global level and the internationalisation of the exhibition Pulire, which takes place in Verona every alternate year and is promoted by the association through its services company.

“Three initiatives”, Ferrarese highlighted, “identified with the aim of providing concrete support to the member companies to find new customers and distributors, especially in emerging countries, and therefore increasing total sales and profit”.

Vice-presidents have also been appointed: Gianfranco Bonotto from the Tre Colli and Davide Lago from Eureka.

The other members of the board of directors are: Matteo Marino from Kemika, Riccardo Raimondi from RCM, Michele Redi from IPC Ready System, Giampaolo Ruffo from Comac and; and the newly elected: Francesco Pasquini from Lucart and Giuseppe Riello from Ghibli & Wirbel.

It must be mentioned that the assembly, gathered as an extraordinary meeting before elections, has approved an important alteration to the association’s statutes to increase the number of  directors on the board from seven to nine. The assembly was also an opportunity to evaluate the current situation and to highlight the great progress made by the organisation and to evaluate growth in terms of constitutional representation, inter-associative relations, research and innovation, training, analysis and communication.

This is a series of important goals which were possible largely thanks to the great contribution of the associates who invested time and knowledge in the projects started by the association.

According to the associates, the project of digitalisation is of fundamental importance and it is certainly an innovative aspect which must be shared by a team of companies. In this respect, the association’s contribution must be to create synergies among the number of associates via a high level project. Digitalisation is in fact an opportunity which must be seized immediately in terms of logistics, distribution and instrumentation in order to stay ahead in the market. Once again the role of associations is essential to create systems in the various markets to sustain the so-called digital revolution.

E-commerce, logistics, distribution and culture in professional products and machines, are just some of the topics which digitalisation will be able to develop and the trade association can determine what will be useful for the members. The beginning of the new year was filled with  optimism.