ETIRA elects Christian Wernhart of Embatex as new President

On 5 april 2006, ETIRA met at Remax in Barcelona, Europe’s largest trade show dedicated to the toner and inkjet remanufacturing industry. On Wednesday afternoon, after the end of the 1st showday, over 50 delegates of ETIRA member firms attended our annual meeting. Main feature this year was the appointment of the new ETIRA Board of Directors. As per statutes the Board renews every 2 years, and ETIRA members unanimously voted for Christian Wernhart of Embatex, Austria to be the association’s new President for the period 2006-2008.

New ETIRA Board 2006-2008 (left to right): Horst-Gerhard Edelmeier, Heinz Sieg,Danilo Pesic, David Connett, Christian Wernhart, Philippe Guenin, Tamas Kadar, Malcolm Hughes


ETIRA members also appointed David Connett (The Recycler, UK) as Vice-President, Heinz Sieg (KMP, Germany) as Treasurer, and as members Horst-Gerhard Edelmeier (OCP, Germany), Tamas Kadar (KIT, Hungary), Malcolm Hughes (Greenman Group, UK) Danilo Pesic (Perihard, Serbia & Montenegro) and Philippe Guenin (LVL, France).

The new President and Board will bring new activities after the successful first 3 years of ETIRA: a fresh Work Programme will be elaborated soon, focusing on fighting unfair generic patents on remanufacturing, further development and awareness-raising of industry standards, enhanced exchange of know-how between members, South-East Asia competition, development colour laser, etc. etc.
New President Wernhart is keen on getting started: “I want ETIRA to take the lead in helping remanufacturers work together, to raise remanufactured market share across the board” !
But there was a little goodbuying too: ETIRA said “thank you” to outgoing President Frank van Meenen. He has steered the association through its first tough 2 years, and that was a major challenge. Vice-President Connett and members thanked him for his efforts by unanimously voting to appoint him Honorary President of ETIRA.

The 90-minute meeting also addressed the obligatory statutory matters, and then focused on 2 key topics: quality standardardization and recent patents granted to OEM’s on how to remanufacture inkjet respectively toner.
Standing in for Dr. Schmitt of LaserCare, Mr. Jan Luijks of Cartrec (NL) briefed delegates on latest developments at the CEN- standards’ front. ETIRA’s Vincent van Dijk presented to members ETIRA’ s latest actions re. generic OEM-patents on remanufacturing. Members were firm in calling on ETIRA to officially oppose these patents on behalf of everybody in our industry.

The meeting was followed by a well-attended Networking Cocktail.





Many thanks to Remax/The Recyler Magazine, kind sponsors of the
ETIRA Cocktail and Meeting room facilities, etc !