sofht focus

Welcome to the winter edition, which, as is the custom, focuses on our recent Annual Lunch. We had a fascinating lecture from Ruth Goodman this year on ‘The history of washing up & its place in world domination!’ to a full house at The Brewery, underlining the importance of booking early. So, save the date for 2025 to avoid disappointment. Further details of the lecture are in this issue for members who missed it alongside photos of guests who got there. I for one will now always connect Palmolive to palm fronds and olive oil – just one of the intrigues of the rise of the soap industry revealed by Ruth. As always, this was a great opportunity to catch-up with former colleagues as well as members and leave the event with a warm fuzzy feeling. This is undoubtedly the industry’s best event for celebrating individual and team success and this edition highlights all of the winners and highly commended entrants – congratulations to all of you for your well-deserved recognition.

On the subject of well-deserved recognition there will be few as deserving as the “Director in the spotlight” in this edition, Alan Lacey, whose contribution to the industry was recognised by the Dorothy Cullinane award at this year’s lunch! As luck would have it, I won one of the prizes in our nominated charity, Reuben’s Retreat raffle which raised over £1500 (for the record, I returned my prize for future fund raising!) – thank you for all for your generosity!

The success of this event relies on our members and sponsors, and I’m delighted that the “SCM in the spotlight” is Food Alert, a sponsor of the Annual Lunch. I hope you enjoy this issue and once again thanks to the team for producing another great edition. Our next edition will be the spring 2025, members interested in submitting articles for that, or any future editions are encouraged to contact SOFHT (inclusion of articles is subject to acceptance by the editorial team).

2024 has been another busy year for SOFHT’s Directors, especially with its youth initiative supported by our members, however, everything is made possible by the hard work of and with thanks to Karen Best and the office team who will be taking a well deserved break between the 20th December and 2nd January 2025, particularly after another demanding and successful Annual Lunch which has been our best yet. I hope members will be getting some valuable downtime too. Finally, may I take this opportunity to wish you a restful and happy festive period with health and happiness for the coming year.
See you in 2025!