I would like to welcome our new members to IMCA and thank our existing members for their continued support in this our 25th anniversary year.
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At the time of writing, our industry is again facing headwinds from both the coronavirus pandemic and more recently the falling oil price. That said, our industry has great resilience and the capabilities and leadership to manage our way through these uncertainties.
Our 2020 Events Plan is now of course subject to significant change and, as an example, we successfully rearranged our February Asia Pacific regional meeting in Kuala Lumpur as a webinar. This strategy can be expected to continue along with our extensive use of video conference based meetings. The planning for our flagship biennial seminar in London in early October this year is ongoing but we will review the situation in June. We have a great line up of speakers and our technical programme is shaping up nicely.
As part of our 25th anniversary celebrations we are producing a small book and would welcome any historic or milestone photographs you are willing to share to help illustrate the last 25 years of our industry.
Despite all the uncertainty, as you will see below, it has been a very busy start to the year for IMCA and we certainly aim to continue with plenty of new initiatives and projects to help improve performance in our industry. Despite travel restrictions and remote working challenges we will be working tirelessly in supporting our members.
Finishing on a sadder note, we would like to celebrate the life of Arthur McEwen, a well known and popular leader in the subsea industry and a stalwart supporter of IMCA over many years. He passed away on 2 January on the Isle of Bute.
Allen Leatt, IMCA Chief Executive