Editorial

By Tom Bowtell Chief Executive Officer of the BCF

Welcome to the Autumn edition of BCF’s Covered magazine. Our lead story is the continuing cost-of-living crisis, and the toll this and other external factors are taking on the coatings industry. The perfect storm of weak product demand, cost-of-living, the energy crisis, record-low consumer confidence and availability of raw materials is having a huge impact on BCF members. We willl be publishing a new raw material information note and press release on the current state of the industry in September. In response to the unprecendented challenges members are facing, the BCF board agreed in May that BCF Full members will receive a 5% rebate on their 2023 subscriptions, and there will be no inflation-linked increase for other categories of membership as a one-off. Although this won’t have a major impact, we hope this will at least alleviate some of the pain that members are feeling.

I don’t often talk about internal BCF governance issues in my notes, but the elephant in the room since I took on this role ten years ago this summer was the BCF legacy pension deficit from the old final salary pension scheme, which was closed in 2011. We’ve worked hard to grow BCF’s membership and income streams to fund the deficit over this period – to the tune of over £1.5m which at times has felt like a black hole. At the same time, we’ve grown our financial strength from £350,000 in assets in 2012 to almost £2m today, which includes ownership of our fantastic office in Coventry. BCF’s strong financial health over the period, combined with astute direction from Rustin’s Ed Krawitt as chair of pension trustees and the right market conditions has led to a buyout of the pension fund to be possible. This means BCF is now officially in the black, and we can focus our financial resources on continuing to support BCF’s membership through what we know are very tough market conditions for everyone.

I’m really looking forward to getting the industry together again in October as we celebrate the industry’s fantastic achievements and innovations at our 2022 Awards dinner. I hope to see many of you there, to enjoy an evening in good company and to briefly escape from the many day-today challenges that I know you are all facing.