LASRA to host international conference in Queenstown

Catherine Maidment

Tourism New Zealand Business Events National Awards Dinner. Photo: LASRA.

The New Zealand Leather and Shoe Research Association (LASRA) recently learned that their bid to host the next Asian International Conference of Leather Science and Technology in 2022 was successful.

“Dr Sujay Prabakar made the pitch on our behalf to the organising committee in Dresden, and with a little help from Tourism NZ, we later were informed our bid was successful. We will be hosting the three-day conference in Queenstown in 2022 – seems a long way off, but there is much to be done between now and then,” says LASRA Director Geoff Holmes.

The 11th Asian International Conference of Leather Science and Technology was held in Xi’an, China in October 2018. It attracted hundreds of researchers from around the world with both oral presentations, and poster presentations on display. The topics covered ranged from basic scientific research of leather, leather chemicals, cleaner technologies for leather manufacture, composite materials and utilization of leather waste resource, environmental protection technologies in leather industry.

“There is a huge drive to manage the global leather industry in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly manner – this was evidenced by the breadth of research on offer at the China conference. We expect the New Zealand offering to bring this even more into the spot light.”

There is already a landing page for the 2022 event set up at www.aiclst.org.

“I was lucky enough to be invited along to the Tourism New Zealand Business Events National Awards Dinner in October in the Grand Foyer of Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, where, as Anna Ward, Marketing & Events Executive of Business Events at Tourism New Zealand describes, we had ‘a fantastic night, celebrating … contribution to winning an international conference to New Zealand and recognising all the hard work that goes along with that’.”

Geoff says the Tourism New Zealand Awards was a very useful event as it transpired, as he learned much about hosting large international events from other attendees who had been there and done that.

To find out more about LASRA's research areas - visit their website.

Date posted: 25 November 2019

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