I am writing this Chairman’s Corner just before Christmas. On behalf of the Management Committee, I would like to extend our compliments for the festive season and to wish all our members and supporters a successful new year. The year ahead, as far as the Materials Technology Forum in Wales is concerned, is already well planned with several significant events scheduled and important changes to the Bulletin and Web Site in the pipeline. Our Prestigious Event in 2003 will be held in May at a venue in North Wales. It will focus on ‘Materials for Aerospace’ with a scene setting lecture from Dr. Steve Garwood who is Director of Materials at Rolls Royce. Full details will be provided in our next Bulletin. Before May, however, other events are being held including a re-run of the very well received ‘Can I make it in Plastics’ seminar in March. Details of our forthcoming events, as always, are listed in the Bulletin and can be accessed on our Web Site.

This Bulletin marks the end of our current series in which we have been focusing on the CETICs and member companies who are working in related areas of technology. In the following pages you will find an overview from the PDR Centre on their activities and related presentations from Withersdale Plastics and Atlas Polymers. In the next issue, we will move to a themed approach focusing particularly on Metals Processing. Subsequent Bulletins will address Non-metallic Materials, Sustainable Materials and finally Research of interest to members at Universities. In all cases, we will be looking to our membership for relevant case studies to support each theme. Future Bulletins will also have a ‘Worth looking at’ section in which interesting and innovative developments in materials are highlighted for our members to follow up.

The Web Site has been substantially revised. On moving to a subscription basis, your committee was very sensitive to the fact that we had to offer our members ‘something extra’ for their support. Visits to assess your technology needs are one element of this. A ‘Members Only’ page on the Web Site is another. It has taken a while to organise the latter, for which we apologise, but this feature is now in hand. In it, you will have access to premier reports on materials and information on organisations and technical issues that may be of benefit to your company. In making these changes, we also appreciated that a web site is only of benefit if it is kept up to date. The mechanism for achieving this has been put in place which I am sure you will appreciate during the forthcoming year.

Finally, I am writing with a plea to our colleagues in higher education. In November, the WDA Technology Prizes were awarded at a dinner held in The Pop Factory at Porth. This is a prestigious event at which the chief guest was Andrew Davies AM, Minister for Economic Development in the Welsh Assembly Government. The MTFW sponsors a prize for ‘Innovative use of Materials’ which was won by Iain Scott-Williams of the University of Glamorgan for the design of an emergency shelter for motorways. The shelters are to give stranded motorists protection from the weather away from their vehicles. This is a high profile award that is widely publicised and fully supported by the WDA if the winner wishes to move towards commercial exploitation of the concept. The basis of the initial proposal is generally a project for a relevant degree scheme. The MTFW will be a sponsor of the ‘Innovative use of Materials’ category again in 2003. We would like to see a larger number of proposals coming from the materials sector. Project supervisors please review your programmes this year and seriously consider entering the competition in the forthcoming spring. Details on this year’s event are recorded in this Bulletin.