SECRETARY S REPORT & FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

Transcription

1 . ABN: ACN: website: SECRETARY S REPORT & FINANCIAL STATEMENTS I have pleasure in presenting the Secretary s Report for the year ending 29th February MEMBERSHIP STATUS The Society s financial membership combined for the various classes continues to decline as shown in Figure 1 but that rate of decline has reversed to be more than two percent as shown in Figure 2. The reversal of decline is still similar for most classes of membership (full, associate, supporting) while the overseas membership is holding steady Total membership ASSCT financial year ending February Figure 1. The total membership profile Annual percentage change ASSCT financial year ending February Figure 2. The reducing rate of membership decline The distribution of membership at the end of the financial year is shown in Figure 3 which is very similar to The number of unfinancial members is also included in this chart. Although the number of unfinancial members has reduced, there are still too many. Many of these members have become unfinancial when they left the industry or their employer s policy changed.

2 2 7% 4% 11% 21% 35% Life Full Associate Supporting Overseas Unfinancial 22% Figure 3. Membership distribution - end 2007/8 financial year CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE The support that members continue to provide for the Society s Annual Conference appears to have stabilised. This year, Conference registrations are ahead of the previous year (2007) with the final number expected to be in the range 320 to 340 as shown in Figure 4. Good attendance is essential to ensure that the Society continues Number Delegates Partners Year Figure 4. The trend in Conference registrations SECRETARIAT The upgrade of major items undertaken last year included the membership database, the entire QSSCT Proceedings and Discussions together with on-line payment facilities (credit card or electronic funds transfer) for conference registration and merchandise purchases, and a members only page for Society notices and information. Those items required very little tuning during the year. Mackay Sugar continues to provide office space at Farleigh mill and hosts the Society s webserver within their computer network at Racecourse mill to provide essential Internet access. Their strong support is gratefully acknowledged.

3 3 Website Statistics The recorded activities within the website continue to increase with the average monthly hits rising from 4,545 in 2006/7 to 7,019 in 2007/8. Figure 4 shows the comparison by month while Figure 5 shows the maximum hourly hit rates by month for 2007/8. The maximum rate recorded in the previous year was only 650 hits/h. The website computer has not indicated any contention problems even at those high rates / / Monthly hits Apr May Jun July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Figure 4. Website monthly total hits 2500 Max hits/h Apr May Jun July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Figure 5. Website maximum hit rate by month for 2007/8 The origin of many of the hits can be determined from the suffix of the caller s address. The list of the 44 countries accessing the website in the past year is shown in Table 1. The activity is the number of months that the country accessed the website at least once. Australian activity represents from 50 to 70 percent of the website activity each month (see Figure 6).

4 4 Figure 6. Website activity by country Copyright Issues There have been several questions, principally from tertiary institutions, to the Secretariat regarding copyright issues of individuals papers. The Secretariat has indicated that posting entire papers on a public domain website was not accepted as fair dealing based on information provided by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) of which the Society is a member. The posting of abstracts with a link to the entire paper on the ASSCT website was also deemed acceptable to the Society. More recently, the Commonwealth Government s establishment of the Research Quality Framework (RQF) offers a more acceptable process, although not in the public domain, and the Society would prefer that venue. However, that implementation is yet to be established among the Australian universities and, with the new government, its future is now uncertain. To solve the issue from 2008 onwards, a revised Proprietorship of Information Release & Licence to Publish Form has been developed based on a CSIRO model and advice from CAL. This form has been applied to all submissions for Industry Equipment Exhibition & Sponsorship This year Mike Statham has undertaken the role of Convenor of the exhibition with Lino Santarossa concentrating on sponsorship issues by commercial organisations. Their efforts have been very successful and congratulations are in order. The Society again welcomes the participation of supporting members in the Conference, and hopes Society members will learn from their expertise and presence within the Exhibition. Advertising in the Proceedings An inaugural offer for full or half-page full-colour advertisements in the Proceedings was circulated to over 30 companies who regularly advertise in Australian sugar industry publications. The cost was set at a very competitive rate (considerably less than established rates) to the very focussed audience which receives the Proceedings. The advertisement coverage would be directed to the best technical audience possible including scientists, engineers, chemists, institutions, farmers, companies and individuals interested in sugar cane technology together with major technical libraries. These advertisements should be considered as a quite separate function and coverage from the sponsorship and industrial equipment exhibition associated with the annual technical conference which are aimed at delegates to the conference. These advertisements will remain with the year s technical presentations.

5 5 The response could only be described as pathetic so this advertising project was abandoned. Perhaps a more favourable response may eventuate in future applications following further customer education. Bursaries The conditions for the various bursary awards are provided on the ASSCT webpage. Details of those awards will be revealed later in this Conference. SECRETARIAT THANKS The formal accounting for the Society has been undertaken by the Manning Corporate Advice which is operated by Laurence Manning formerly of Taits which has a long association with the sugar industry. Mrs Sonia Head has continued to act very competently as point of contact with members, sponsors and Industry Equipment Exhibition personnel, in her position as Office Administrator. The website is for the circulation of membership information, Conference details and other Society matters and has functioned well. The availability of technical papers as pdf images is becoming a popular service. The firm of Watson-Ferguson Ltd has again undertaken the production of the Proceedings this year. The task of Honorary General Secretary of the Society has again been challenging during the year. In particular, I record sincere thanks to Sonia Head (Office Administrator) for her devotion to managing the Society office and my wife Robin for her continuing support. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS A snap-shot of the auditors analysis of the Society s financial position is shown in Appendix 1. The Profit and Loss account shows there was a loss of $72,273 compared with the profit for the previous year of $21,205. However, that loss was inflated by:! the stock write-down of $46,653 from disposal of excess Proceedings (to make storage room) and,! an increase of $40,533 in conference expenses. The balance sheet reflects that decrease in total equity which means that the costs for running the Conference and providing membership services exceed the income stream. While this current venue can be classed as expensive, the next two conference sites should help to reverse this trend. However, the membership cost and conference registration charge will need continual review to preserve the level of reserves to ensure that the Society operations can continue with confidence. THE OUTLOOK The membership and registration levels appear to have turned the corner. In particular, the manufacturing sector has recovered from its low level for both conference attendance and the contribution of technical papers. The Society continues to function well; however, increases in membership, sponsorship and annual conference participation are still required to ensure the future viability. The subscription levels will be reviewed again by the executive during this conference. Dr. W. McWhinney, Honorary General Secretary, April, 2008.

6 Appendix 1. PROFIT & LOSS ACCOUNT AND BALANCE SHEET 6 DETAILED PROFIT & LOSS ACCOUNT YEAR ENDED 29 FEBRUARY / /08 $ $ REVENUE 55,768 Membership subscriptions 58, ,190 Conference registration fees 59,901 9,545 Industry equipment exhibition 48,818 48,409 Conference sponsorship 44, Donations - General Donations - Bursaries 818 4,885 Sale of Proceedings/badges 4,499 10,776 Interest 8, Other revenue 6, ,817 Revenue per Income Statement 232, ,817 Total revenue 232,970 EXPENDITURE 20,625 Employee costs 19,440 7,300 Directors' remuneration/honoraria 14,500 6,200 Other honoraria 8,000 2,006 Depreciation of plant and equipment 1,363 52,840 Conference Proceedings 50, ,115 Conference expenses 144,648 1,764 Bursary expenses 1, Auditors' remuneration Stock write down 46,653 24,912 Other operating expenses 17, ,612 Total expenditure 305,243 21,205 Net profit/(loss) from ordinary activities (72,273) 0 Net increase (decrease) in asset revaluation reserve 0 21,205 Total change in equity (72,273)

7 7 BALANCE SHEET YEAR ENDED 29 FEBRUARY / /8 $ ASSETS Current Assets 223,939 Cash and cash equivalents 254,327 64,749 Inventories 20,588 32,279 Other current assets 9, ,967 Total current assets 284,601 Non-current Assets 4,708 Property, plant and equipment 3,345 4,708 Total non-current assets 3, ,675 Total Assets 287,946 LIABILITIES Current Liabilities 60,432 Trade and other payables 94,976 60,432 Total current liabilities 94,976 60,432 Total liabilities 94, ,243 NET ASSETS Equity 265,243 Reserves 192, ,243 TOTAL EQUITY 192,970

8 2008 REPORT OF THE PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE The program for 2008 consists of 59 full length papers, two more than last year. Details of the abstracts and papers received are given in the Table. While the total number of papers accepted is similar to that of last year, the outstanding differences are in the increase in manufacturing papers and the decreases in agriculture and general papers. The turnaround in the number of manufacturing papers is pleasing following last year which had the lowest number since the 1940s. A full program has been provided for both agriculture and manufacturing streams G M Ag Total Abstracts received Papers received Papers either not accepted or withdrawn after refereeing Papers accepted Papers accepted A new approach this year has been to include a Nitrogen Symposium in the Program as a concurrent session in the agriculture stream. The Proceedings contains 16 published symposium papers of 1-2 pages in length. Presentations will be of only 5 minutes duration. There are 25 poster paper summaries in the Proceedings (21 Ag and 4 M), a pleasing increase on last year's 10. This is due to a good response from postgraduate students with projects relevant to the sugar industry. Posters have a higher profile this year as they are being displayed for the duration of the Conference in the Auditorium near the Industry Equipment Exhibition and the meals area. The Publication Committee welcomed two new members this year. All members of the Publication Committee have worked hard at their task and I am grateful to them. The work loads were papers for agricultural members to review and 7-14 papers for manufacturing members. Some were able to call on colleagues for assistance in reviewing papers and we thank those volunteers for that. The addition of an extra agricultural member to the Committee helped to share the load. The refereeing process occurs during what is the holiday period for many people and tests the professional dedication of all volunteers involved in refereeing. The referees' reviews are generally well appreciated by authors and are very important in achieving technically sound and well written papers that maintain a consistent, professional standard for the Proceedings and hence the ASSCT. The 2008 Proceedings has a record number of pages. This is largely due to the inclusion of two more papers, the Nitrogen Symposium (24 pages) and one of the keynote papers (16 pages). Editorial issues that arose this year included the following examples. In the agriculture stream, only 43% of papers have four authors or fewer while 41% have five authors and 16% have more than five (one paper has nine authors). Instructions to authors suggest only four authors with associates covered in acknowledgements. Some papers with multiple authors required major rewriting and their standard of presentation suggested that they had not been read by some of the authors. The Committee also discussed 2008 Publications Committee Report

9 Exec No 1-2 'grower and industry oriented papers', which are valuable and popular contributions to ASSCT, and agreed that there was already scope for these papers, as evidenced at recent Conferences, and there was no need for different standards or guidelines to be introduced. Les Robertson is retiring from the Publications Committee after eight years. Les is a thorough and thoughtful referee with the ability to provide a quick yet detailed review of a paper. Thanks Les for making a major contribution to the Society's Conferences. This has been my second year as Editor and I thank my fellow committee members for their support and assistance. I would also like to thank Peter Knight who continues to manage the production and printing of the Proceedings and always does an excellent job. RC Bruce Chairman ASSCT Publications Committee 2008 Publications Committee Report