Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1212207
12 PalletCentral • January-February 2020 palletcentral.com ADVANCING OUR MISSION YEAR IN REVIEW F ive years ago, the Board of Directors challenged leadership and staff with a new long-term strategic vision: achieve and sustain worldwide acceptance of NWPCA as the global thought and information leader of wood packaging in unit-load solutions. To tackle this challenge, we had to think and work bigger, smarter and stronger, and it would take time. Research and development take time; nurturing relationships and partnerships take time; collaborating and building alliances take time. Now, five years later, the NWPCA has come a long way. We continue to improve our strategic vision, raise our profile globally, and further expand the value proposition of membership, the impact of our advocacy initiatives, and the business value of the Pallet Design System™ (PDS) by working bigger, smarter and stronger. Stronger Advocacy: ISPM 15, Pallet Prohibitions, PAC and Marketing Our entire industry depends on healthy forests, and that's why we take great care to make sure they remain healthy. NWPCA continues to be well-positioned and increasingly known as an authority when it comes to wood packaging issues at the state, national, and international level. The USDA APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services) has invited NWPCA to represent the wood packaging sector on a 2020 event associated with the International Year of Plant Health. We are active in the International Forestry Quarantine Research Group (IFQRG) and participated in a meeting in Brazil, October 2019, and at NAPPO (North American Plant Protection Organization) meetings in Montreal in October 2019. Because the ISPM 15 program facilitates safe trade by minimizing the threat of invasive insects, the NWPCA works with an array of partners to advocate for the program and find ways to improve it continuously. We built a new relationship with the Entomological Society of America, which has led to our active participation with them in a 2020 wood packaging workshop. We spent much of 2019 engaging in a new issue with the Environmental Protection Agency to seek a WORKING BIGGER, SMARTER & STRONGER