Derek Dickins, who joined Seatrade from day one and worked for the company in the UK, Greece and Hong Kong, passed away this week on the Greek island of Aegina.
Changing of the Guard at APLF
By Dr Michael Redwood and Richard Smith
Director of APLF and Executive Vice President of Informa Markets (Asia), Michael Duck, will be taking on new, expanded responsibilities for the company as Executive Vice President- Commercial Development, a global position. This will mean that after 27 years Michael will be handing over his role as APLF Director to his Hong Kong colleague David Bondi.
It is hard to recall the Asia of 27 years ago a time when few leather industry executives had any knowledge of China beyond a giant that was awakening and could as both a producer and consumer have become important. Few recognized the speed and the scale of what was to follow. What was the role of a trade fair in this early stage? In a leather industry that had for decades become used to major fairs in France and Italy, being the sole punctuation in the calendar year, how should APLF evolve?
Tony Nash, Derek Dickins and Themis Vokos taken in the very early days of Seatrade A look back over the half-century history of Seatrade and this its flagship magazine, first launched by company founder Themis Vokos 50 years ago.
The vision of Seatrade founder Themistocles Vokos was to create a news medium that would focus on the business of maritime transport, appealing as much to the owners of cargo and the financial and trading communities as to traditional shipping – an ‘Economist’ for the sea transportation industry.
At a time when ideas about the globalisation of trade were starting to be recognised, the new magazine was intended to cover the patterns of global seaborne trade, as much as the operational and technical sides of the industry. Seatrade’s first editor Robert Hawkins was hired from the Financial Times and a network of correspondents was set up covering Australia, South America and the Middle East, as well as the more established shipping centres in