First General Assembly of A.SPIRE held on 20 November

The first General Assembly of A.SPIRE, the legal entity established to manage and implement the proposed Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency (SPIRE) Public-Private-Partnership (PPP), was held on 20 November in Brussels. A.SPIRE president Klaus Sommer from Bayer introduced the two vice-presidents Lionel Platteuw of EUnited – the European Engineering Industries Association, and Bertrand de Lamberterie of Eurofer and the European Steel Technology Platform (ESTEP), as well as A.SPIRE's new executive director, Loredana Ghinea.

A.SPIRE membership is constituted now of 59 member companies, associations and research organizations from eight process sectors and 14 countries. They approved updates on budgetary and administrative aspects of the association and debated the next steps in developing the SPIRE PPP. Furthermore, six working groups and the Ad-hoc Industry Advisory Group (AIAG) were established in order to work on the Roadmap and detailed project proposals to be launched through Horizon2020 in January 2014.

The president called on members to promote SPIRE at national level. He announced that an event was scheduled to take place in the European Parliament in January/February to promote SPIRE at European level