BMA elects new president at virtual AGM

The Bathroom Manufacturers Association (BMA) has named a new president at its first ever virtual annual general meeting.

Members of the trade body appointed John Robinson as President for the next two years. Robinson, Business Director of Ideal Standard, takes over from Roca’s Alan Dodds.

Jason Parker, Managing Director of Thomas Dudley was named BMA’s First Vice-President and Jason Smith, Chief Commercial Officer of Bristan will act as Second Vice-President.

Elsewhere on the agenda, Chief Executive Tom Reynolds gave an overview of association activity. On sustainability, the BMA is to host its first ever free Sustainability Forum next week (1 July). Anyone can register to participate via the BMA website.

On product compliance, Reynolds updated members on BMA’s Code of Ethics audit, which is now moving into a second phase. He finished by paying tribute to outgoing President Alan Dodds and the association’s secretariat team.

Following the formal business of the AGM, Professor Noble Francis, Chief Economist of the Construction Products Association (CPA) delivered a presentation on the economic outlook. Francis explained a wide range of economic factors captured in CPA’s modelling and emphasised the difficulty of forecasting in the current climate. Notwithstanding, CPA expects the construction sector to contract by nearly 25% in 2020, with a sharp fall in Q2 and gradual recovery, before continuing to recover by 25.5% in 2021.

Despite the switch to digital, the meeting was a great success, says Reynolds. 'Originally we were looking forward to welcoming our members to our AGM in the usual way. For obvious reasons, we needed to shift our plans and held the meeting on Microsoft Teams instead. It was a bit of a logistical challenge but worked well.

'Nevertheless, I think everybody in the industry is looking forward to being able to meet up again and network properly.'

He added: 'I’m looking forward to working with John and the new Presidential team. We are living through one of the most challenging times our industry has ever faced. The BMA is ready to do its bit to help our members through and come back better.'