It Was an Exciting Spring for VMA!

Since the pandemic, VMA has refined its in-person events to three cornerstone events each year, with others offered as needed. In the fall, VMA holds its premier event for industry leaders in our membership, the VMA and VRC Annual Meeting. In the summer, it is the Market Outlook Workshop, perfect for those with marketing, sales and business responsibilities at our member companies. And, in the spring, we hold the Valve Forum: Conference & Exhibits — which is one of the few events that is open to anyone in the industry. This year, we launched a new event alongside the Valve Forum, the Hydrogen Valve Summit.

Thanks to the VMA Committee members who worked hard to find the best speakers on the topics that are of most interest to our industry — both events were very well received and a great success! While the Valve Forum does have an exhibit area, it is the education and speakers that take center stage. The addition of the Hydrogen Valve Summit only reinforced the strength of the content delivered at VMA’s events.

VMA’s Board of Directors also met this spring to help guide the organization through the myriad issues and opportunities the industry is facing. At both the Board meeting, and the Valve Forum and Hydrogen Valve Summit, conversations on energy, sustainability, technology, innovation and growth, government affairs and PFAS were repeated.

While VMA is working on all those issues, our response to potential PFAS bans is front and center. VMA has been working and will continue to educate lawmakers and other external constituents, and respond on behalf of our members to the attempts to ban and treat all PFAS in the same manner, without regard to their benefits, risk to human health or detriment to the environment. Most recently in March, VMA submitted comments to both Maine and Minnesota on the importance of using some PFAS in the equipment of the manufacturing facilities of so many of our end-use markets. Additional information on this is throughout this issue of Valve and is the topic of a workshop this fall.

VMA’s role is to also bring our members together to share information and address, together, how best to navigate through many of the headwinds and also the opportunities ahead. Whether PFAS, new markets like hydrogen, meeting sustainability goals or responding to stakeholders on sustainability and other issues, we are better together. I’m grateful to the member companies who are part of VMA and who take advantage of the benefits from VMA’s role in convening the industry. If you aren’t a part of VMA, please contact me to find out how to get involved and to learn more about what you are missing.