LIF. The Lighting Industry Federation

LIF held its Annual Lunch Event, combined with its formal AGM on the 24th May at Draper's Hall.

This is a key event for Members in the LIF year and it was extremely well supported with 160 people attending the lunch and 55 attending the morning workshop, which provided plenty of networking opportunities.

The main highlights of the day were the Morning Workshop and the Annual Lunch.

The morning workshop entitled "Future trends/Influences on lighting" comprised two presentations given by  Chris Mesnager, the General Manager of Toyoda Gosei Europe and Mark Major, Director of Speirs and Major. Both presentations were stimulating and provided good material and thought for the delegates. Chris outlined trends in the semi-conductor market and the impact that LEDs and Lighting represented to the semi-conductor industry. Mark talked about trends in lighting design and how lighting products can influence that and the influence that lighting design will have on products.

The lunch event had a busy programme in between the courses. The Abacus Awards, for the outstanding student of the year for the LIF Certificate Course were presented by Andrew Morris-Richardson, MD of Abacus and Mike Collett, LIF President. There were three excellent finalists this year and the overall winner was Russell Coles of E7 Contracting Ltd. 

Myles McCarthy, General Manager of the  Carbon Trust Implementation Services Group gave an update on the changes to the loan scheme, which has been recently changed from interest free to favourable commercial interest rates and the development of a new scheme to encourage greater take-up of refurbishment of lighting schemes. This is planned to be launched later this year.

As in previous years,  the Electrical and Electronics Industries Benevolent Association (EEIBA) organised a raffle  to raise awareness and donations for our Industry charity.  The Vice-President, Jim McArthur announced the winning ticket. The prize was kindly donated by Philips.  The raffle raised a fantastic £1335.00, so thank you to everyone for supporting this very worthwhile cause 

Finally the outgoing President, Mike Collett of WILA Lighting, gave a review of the progress and achievements in LIF over the previous year; this concluded by installing the incoming President for 2011/12, Rune Marki of Osram.  Alasdair McRury of Holophane will be  the Vice-President for 2011/12. The details of the Presidents review will be included in the fuller LIF Report for 2010/11, which will be published on the LIF website in the near future.


Click here to view the LIF Annual Lunch Gallery....