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General Secretary’s Report and President’s Column GENERAL SECRETARY’S REPORT Dear Members Happy New Year to you all.


January is a busy month for the Institute, if you have not received your membership subscription invoice by the time you read this then it will be with you shortly.


In the digital age that we


are working in, the Institute is trying wherever possible to send the invoices by email. So that our members can pay quickly and securely. When making payments please ensure you let me have your account number which is on top of the invoice and the invoice number this ensures the money gets allocated to the correct member. We are processing lots of transactions for the same amount so it is imperative you use these no matter what method of payment you use. All transactions are processed and payments allocated to the individual account. With the same amount being invoiced for subscriptions it is very easy for me to make a mistake so please help by using your membership number.


It is so much easier to use email instead of post and it saves the Institute a lot of money, so please let me have your email address, the quickest way is to drop me an email at secretary@ireng.org you will then be on our system.


If you are not a UK member, paying via sage pay is a cheaper and more cost effective way to make your payment, paying by bank transfer costs the Institute £6 per transaction and sometimes costs the sender.


The Buyers Guide invoices are also in the pipeline and should be with you soon, may I ask you to check your entries to make sure they are correct.


In December the Institute sent journals to the Indian Ceramic Society’s Annual Conference, I would like to thank all who helped these journals through customs especially SAGIRAJU CHANDRASHEKAR who you will see below showing off one of our journals, it was not an easy task! But we have had several new members from this exercise. So we have to say it was worth the effort.


We are sending over 2000 copies of our March journal to Ceramitec, which is being held in Munich 10-13 April, if any members are visiting I would be pleased to have any feedback on how the journals were distributed.


Following on from another very good conference, preparations are in place for our next Annual Conference and Training Day which will be at Tankersley Manor Hotel on the 14th and 15th of November. Jan mentions in his column about having the Conference on Halloween, we have managed to change the date as this also clashed with half term for the schools.


Jayne Woodhead


General Secretary & Treasurer Institute of Refractories Engineers


PRESIDENT’S COLUMN


Dear Members and Colleagues


Firstly a welcome to my first column as president for the IRE and wishing you all a very exciting 2018 new year.


The year 2017 has ended on a good note with the conference


held in


November. The number of attendees were slightly lower than the previous year, but then we have always seen some swing in numbers. Although this event is not considered to outdo and replace any of the other major international conferences, it still has a very secure place for the United Kingdom refractory industry. The enthusiasm and energy


January 2018 Issue


between the regular attendees was yet again notable. Good papers were presented with excellent technical content. It is always good to know what our manufacturers, such as Almatis and Elkem, are busy creating in terms of better and more user friendly monolithics in order to meet the ever increasing market needs. Hoganas Bjuf gave a good insight on the topic of the hot abrasion. A panel discussion created some excitement towards the end of the day as the topic of regulation in the refractory industry was discussed. Sean Brean from Ecoplant had a short poster discussion about robotic arm demolition which was a good alternative to a technical paper: indeed, the concept of presenting posters may well be incorporated into future conferences. To complement the conference, a very good presentation about explosive spalling during dry-out was incorporated into the training day.


The training day was well attended, and Sam Franklin presented a very interesting topic on design. Design is


ENGINEER THE REFRACTORIES 3


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