With just over three weeks to go before our Annual Dinner, we have confirmed Seapeak, formerly known as Teekay, as our final Bronze sponsor. We are also delighted to announce that The Mission to Seafarers will be our chosen charity for the event. The Mission to Seafarers provides help and support to the 1.5 million crew members who face danger every day supporting the global economy. The Mission works in over 200 ports in more than 50 countries, providing a wide range of support to our keyworker seafarers. During the Annual Dinner, Merchant Navy cadets will help collect the charity envelopes and guests will be asked to donate generously.

We were pleased to see that International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan visited India this week to start negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and India. Both nations have a strong maritime history and our policy team have been working closely with the Department for International Trade on this. If any members have any questions on these negotiations, please do get in touch with Gavin Simmonds or Matthew Wright.

Our next Understanding UK Shipping course will be taking place online on January 26^th. The course is open to both members and non-members and aims to provide a comprehensive overview of all the key information people in the industry need. If you would like to book your place please click here and follow the simple steps. We have also just released details of our members-only workshop on January 25^th to help formulate UK Chamber policy on how to ensure a sufficient supply of highly-skilled UK officers in the future. This is a really important event for the Chamber and our members so please do sign up. More details on the event and how to register can be found on our website.

Collecting feedback and information on what we do well and what we could do better is vital for us as an organisation going forward. Our 2021/22 Members Survey closes on Sunday evening and if you haven’t yet filled in the questionnaire please do, particularly our Professional and Associate members. It will only take around 5 minutes and we really do value all the feedback.

Finally this week I would like to welcome two new staff members to the Chamber, Jo McGhee our new Events Manager and Onder Canbulat who has joined the Policy Team and will support the Safety & Environment team, BTA & BROA by developing and providing technical policy assistance around decarbonisation. A warm welcome to both.