What did trade associations ever do for us? CESA is glad you asked…
Association Week, June 17-21 2019, spotlights UK professional associations’ work
What have trade associations ever done for us? CESA aims to underline the answer during Associations Week, June 17-21 2019. The event, organised by the Institute of Associations Leadership (IAL), is designed to shine a spotlight on the work of professional associations and to celebrate the people, both employees and volunteers, who make the associations work.
“The association sector is one of the UK’s great unsung stories and we have a mission to change that through Associations Week,” says Catherine Whitmore, executive director of the IAL.
Keith Warren is director of CESA and is in no doubt of the value the Association delivers to members and to the foodservice industry at large. “I’m proud of the passion of the CESA team and the hard work they do,” he says. “From training initiatives like CFSP to briefing government ministers and lobbying legislators, from negotiating grants for UK companies to helping promote our members’ products into new markets around the world, we are involved in a huge range of activities that help the foodservice equipment industry to generate business.”
Some of the areas CESA is planning to highlight for Associations Week are:
Training: the CFSP (Certified Food Service Professional) training initiative, which is run by CESA, aims to raise professionalism throughout the industry. In fact the latest CFSP seminar, where 28 hopeful candidates will study for CFSP accreditation, takes place during Association Week, on the 20th and 21st June at Smeg UK Ltd, in Abingdon. On the back of the success of CFSP, CESA recently launched its Principles of Food Service (PFS) training scheme, which is aimed at newcomers to the industry.
Influence: CESA’s expertise is highly respected – so much so that the Association regularly meets with government ministers and EU legislators to brief them about key areas, such as equipment standards, or lobby them on issues such as Brexit.
Leadership: CESA has taken the industry lead in a variety of key matters, including sustainability, BIM and the Connected Kitchen. In the past few months alone CESA has published guides on areas as diverse as Reducing Food Waste, Ecodesign, and Decommissioned Equipment. The Association is regularly called on for advice – for example, it helped draft Zero Waste Scotland’s Guide to Managing Food Waste and British Water’s FOG (Fats, Oil and Grease) best practice guide.
The bigger picture: CESA is highly respected member of EFCEM, the European Federation of Catering Equipment Manufacturers. The Association is directly involved in the work of setting equipment standards in the EU.
Information: through its various technical and specialist committees, CESA is able to call on a huge wealth of expertise. The Association offers direct access to this expertise and is thus a source of relevant information and data that can’t be found simply by searching on the internet.
Events: CESA organises some of the foodservice equipment industry’s most popular and valuable annual events, including the CESA Conference and the Light Equipment and Tableware Forum, as well as a variety of special one-offs covering technical and topical areas.