www.ireng.org Dear Members


The refractory industry continues to go through uncertain times in the UK which does make it difficult for companies to support our journal, but we must thank all those who continue to give their support.


We are committed to providing a diverse range of company news and technical papers from our industry and I am sure you will agree that again this issue we have attracted some technical papers of the highest quality and content. Our first technical paper from Morgan Advanced Ceramics discusses the latest in kiln insulation techniques whilst we are proud to have been selected as the first publication outside the US to publish the technical paper entitled Anti-oxidant Additions to Refractories: Roles and Effects, that Dr Ruth Engel presented at the St Louis Section/Refractory Ceramics Division 52nd Annual Symposium in March of this year.


Some of you may have noticed a small difference in the invoices for membership subscriptions this year, we are using sage pay, which will allow payment by credit card to accept payment on your account without firstly paying to the bank and then manually adjusting the details, this both saves time and money, last year we paid over £1,000 for the credit card service supplied by streamline. We expect charges to be about £200 this year, with the new system. We carried out a trial with the Australian branch firstly and have now switched over for the full membership.


The Council met recently, and again Mike Walton from Australia joined via Skype for part of the meeting, and again offered some ideas from the Australian branch, which the council/exec are considering.


These included the IRE having a presence at some of the exhibitions in Asia/ pacific areas of the world. We are looking at costs but it seems we do have


Treasurer’s Report and President’s Column


members who attend these exhibitions so with some help then we may be able to have a presence without too high a cost.


Because of the size of Australia the members of the institute spend a lot of time flying and there is a demand for the journal to be available so it can be read on tablets. We produce the journal in electronic format these days so although the format is a little different, we think that this can be done, and will carry out an experiment with this idea. It may be that this journal will be available in the new format, if we don’t have the time to get this journal into the new format then July’s journal will be available, it will mean members wanting to use this format will have to obtain a password to download it on to a tablet. We do not intend that this will replace the printed journal, but it could work out cheaper than posting the journal to Australia. It costs about £4 per journal to send by post.


Work on the conference is continuing, our President wants to make this year’s event a little higher profile than in recent years, and he has got several very high profile speakers, more detail is given elsewhere in the journal, but I would advise that you book places early. The conference as usual will be the following day and this year’s subject is attracting attention from some engineering companies so we hope to have a very well attended event.


I am currently working on the accounts for last year which need to be finalised with our accountants (shorts) but because we don’t have branch accounts from the North West branch, shorts will not allow us to finalise the main account, so if any member from The North West branch can help please contact me.


It was very sad to hear of the recent death of Geoff Evans. Geoff had worked in the Glass industry for most of his life, he was a member of the Stoke branch and was always happy to give a technical paper, Geoff gave a very good paper at last year’s conference which was judged to be the best paper of the day and was published in the journal. My thoughts are with his family.


Jayne Woodhead,


General Secretary & Treasurer Institute of Refractories Engineers


President’s Column


Hello Members and Colleagues


The headlines about the Iron and Steel industry, both internationally and domestically in the UK, have been inescapable this year. It


is


therefore entirely appropriate to shift the bias of our focus of the 2016 conference


towards this


important market sector not only to look at the market but also to show our support for our end user colleagues. It still ties in with our theme of (every cloud has) “Silver Linings and Value” that end users so desperately need.


As part of this shift we have managed to secure speakers from; ArcelorMittal Dofasco – Tom Vert, Vice President Manufacturing TATA Scunthorpe / LISI – Dave Collins / Stuart Woodliffe UK Steel-EEF/ISSB – Richard White


May 2016 Issue Kerneos – Fabien Simonin


They will be giving examples of successes refractories have provided end users, where and how refractories can help add value for end users, and UK Steel-EEF will be giving their insights into the Iron & Steel industry and its future.


On top of this, there will also be speakers from refractory suppliers and raw material suppliers meaning that for the first time in a very long time the full supply chain will be represented at the conference. This bodes well for some interesting and animated discussion which we will make time for around the presentations.


Hopefully the potential sale of TATA Steel in the UK and the proposed renaming of TATA Scunthorpe (hopefully more!) to a new British Steel will have turned into reality by the time we get to conference. Now that truly would be an amazing silver lining!


Whilst the focus is shifted to Iron and Steel we must not forget our colleagues in other refractory related industries who are also in a difficult period. For example, the slump in the oil price (now slightly recovered) has meant a significant down turn in activity in Foundries with many closing their doors as production is consolidated in sister plants or, sadly, closing


ENGINEER THE REFRACTORIES 3


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