News from 2024 Autumn Meeting and Sustainability-themed Seminar
This year’s Eurobitume members Autumn Meeting (Extraordinary General Meeting) and Seminar took place on 16th and 17th October in Rome, Italy.
Committee and Steering Group highlights
Members and invited guests heard informative 2024 activity reports and 2025 outline plans about Eurobitume’s three expert committees, HSE (Health, Safety and Environment); Technical; and PRC (Public Relations and Communications); the Safe Handling of bitumen Sub Committee (SHSC) and the Bitumen Sustainability Steering Group (BSSG).
Eurobitume Sustainability Lead Dr Brice Delaporte updated members on the progress of TF LCA (Task Force Life Cycle Assessment). The new Eurobitume LCA is scheduled to be available for external use in early 2025.
Committee Chair Rotations
In Spring 2025, the role of Chair in the following committees will be rotated:
- HSE Committee – current Chair is Giulia Pizzella from Eni.
- PRC Committee – current Chair is Sergio Bovo from Alma Petroli.
- Technical Committee – current Chair isVéronique Ducreux from ExxonMobil.
Members of the committees will be invited to submit their nominations for these roles to the Director General before the end of January 2025. The handover of new Chairs will take place after the Eurobitume Spring Meeting 2025.
E&E activities
Siobhan then provided a brief report on the successful 8th E&E Congress, held earlier this year in the beautiful city of Budapest, and confirmed the next E&E Event will again take place in Vienna over 11-12 June 2026.
Asphalt Institute
Pete Grass, President of the Asphalt Institute (AI), a long-time collaboration partner organisation in the United States, recognised the productive relationship AI has with Eurobitume and summarised key projects AI is currently working on.
Closing words
Prior to delivering a few closing words, Eurobitume President Pavel Kriz (ExxonMobil) announced that next year’s Spring Meeting will take place in Prague on 2nd & 3rd April 2025.
Autumn Seminar
On the morning of 17th October, Eurobitume Sustainability Lead Dr Brice Delaporte opened the members Seminar (Sustainability and Eurobitume Activities) by summarising the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) 2024 project
Invited guest speaker Alex Stoffregen, a Senior Consultant at Sphera, presented a high-level report about the current status of the EB LCA project and invited questions from members.
Laurent Porot (Kraton) Chair of the newly formed Task Force c-PCR (complimentary Product Category Rules), which reports under the umbrella of BSSG, briefly outlined the Task Force’s objectives.
The seminar ended with Brice Delaporte presenting a summary of other on-going BSSG activities.
Note: the member webinar on 13th November is based on material and information presented at the Autumn Seminar.
