INTERSPILL 2022 REFLECTIONS

INTERSPILL 2022 REFLECTIONS

Interspill was last run in 2018 in London and was therefore supposed to run in 2021 but COVID forced a one year delay. The Interspill Committee bravely decided to make the event face-toface and not hybrid as people do business with people and they felt it was time to leave COVID behind for a few days in June!

However recognising that COVID has changed our world, putting pressure on budgets, and also travel, the need to make the Conference more accessible to all those attending Interspill was obvious to both the Committee and Organiser. Consequently for 2022, the Conference was open to all attending, with all visitors paying a flat daily fee of €100 to attend all of the event. Traditional Conference delegates saw the cost of attending for 3 days halved, and day visitors were able to access the Exhibition, but also attend all Conference and workshops sessions.

There were other innovations with the Interspill Academy offering training each day. The Science and Innovation Workshops were expanded and were very interesting. The Premiam conference was also integrated into the event. We were fortunate in that exhibitors also chose to use the event to host sales meetings, training conferences and networking events for customers.

busy as ever. Thus with the energy transition, greater focus on environmental protection, emerging fuels, emerging pollutants there was much for the Conference to discuss in its 21 sessions.

The event saw over 1000 delegates, a full exhibition, interesting conference, detailed and interesting science and innovation workshops and the joy of being face to face again. It was clear that people enjoyed being back together and catching up, doing business and learning from each other. The exhibitors felt that is was a case of quality and not quantity and went away pleased.

This was the first event run by iConex who replaced Reed. There is learning to be take onboard before 2025 and this may well prompt a move away from a capital city location. RAI were not as professional as when last there and also very expensive both to hire the facility but also to access any of their services. Hotels in the proximity to the event were also high cost but many had staff shortages that meant poor or zero service.

The Interspill Committee will be reviewing the event in light of the positive feedback received from exhibitors and delegates but also look at improving and lowering the costs of doing Interspill 2025.

The industry evolved new ways of responding to and training for incidents, like MV Wakashio, MV X-Press Pearl and the Llangennech derailment during COVID from which much has been learned. Indeed many older hands would consider the industry to be as

A link to the Interspill Conference Proceedings is at:

https://www.interspill.org/previous-events/2022-interspillamsterdam/

Ms Maja Markovcic EMSA Executive Director one of three opening speakers at Interspill 2022

The three opening speakers toured the exhibition and reviewed the poster sessions

The Conference was generally well attended with 21 sessions over the three days

The exhibition was popular throughout

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It was consistently busy on UKEireSpill Member, Vikoma’s stand. They had a good event!

SurfCleaner had good interest in the performance of their skimmer

UKEireSpill member DESMI, also reported good feedback on their range

Lamor, with their clean mission statement ’Lets Clean the World’ had a good event

Empteezy were showing the UK built spill prevention and control solutions

Oil Spill Response had a large presence and were involved in a number of conference sessions

Briggs Marine were promoting their mix of shipping and response services

Ambipar were impressing with their rapidly expanding response network

Darcy and Ayles Fernie announced their new helicopter mounted dispersant system at the show and were busy throughout.

Balaena were presenting their patented recovery system for use in oil, debris and algae/weed recovery

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