13 February 2014 Russell Clarke - Face to Face
Thu, Feb 13th 2014 at 12:00 am - 12:00 am
New member Russell Clarke gave his Face to Face talk and cheques were presented to Children's Hospice Association Scotland and Parkinson's UK from last October's Beat Beethoven event.
President Colin Strachan welcomed members and guests to last week's meeting, back at the Westlands Hotel after the previous week's memorable visit to Queen Victoria School.
The evening commenced with presentation of 2 cheques, each for £5102, to Jim Lang representing Children's Hospice Association Scotland and to Tony Ford on behalf of Parkinson's UK - the proceeds from the second Beat Beethoven Fun Run held last October at Stirling University. Both recipients were delighted with the cheques and thanked the club for its ongoing support.
l-r Peter Holmes, Jim Lang, President Colin Strachan, Tony Ford, Paddy Holmes with Beethoven aka member Alan Lee.
The speaker for the evening was Russell Clarke who joined the club in June last year and gave the traditional 'Face to Face' presentation to let members have some insight into his background and career.
He started by 'confessing' he was a lifetime Airdrie supporter, having been born and raised there before moving on to the University of Strathclyde to study Pure and Applied Chemistry. After a brief spell in banking, during which he got married to Tricia, Russell returned to university, this time at St Andrews, to take a PhD. Following this, he spent a few years in the chemical industry in North East England before accepting a position at Grangemouth and moving with Tricia and their 2 children to Dunblane where they are now well settled.
The second part of Russell's talk concerned the global chemical industry in which he has spent the last 15 years as a commercial manager, travelling across the world. He noted that the UK had badly lost its position in the industry, particularly to China which had increased its market share from 8% in 2002 to around 35% in 2012, mainly due to investment and a low cost base.
Russell completed his presentation with an outline of the future of food production using nano technology to compensate for the increasing demand for agrochemicals to produce food from a relatively limited land space.
Audrey Cooper gave the vote of thanks for a fascinating talk.
