The Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association (APTRA) signed up its 100th member, India-based luxury textiles company Pashma at the TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition and Conference this week. Australian confectionery company Nutworks and Big Retail, which manages the inflight retail operations across AirAsia and its subsidiary airlines also signed up during the show.

 

Jaya Singh, President APTRA and Michael Barrett, Executive Officer, APTRA told TRBusiness in Singapore this week, that they are pleasantly surprised by the recent surge of interest in APTRA. Barrett said that he feels that Singh’s excellent presentation, made at the TFWA Asia Pacific Conference, has highlighted the multi-faceted nature of APTRA.

 

“It’s not just about advocacy,” said Barrett. “We provide really in-depth and useful information to our members.” Singh announced that APTRA would be launching a travel retail database, exclusively available to its members, at TFAP on Monday.

 

In May last year membership stood at 87 companies so the new total of 102 companies represents an increase of 15% in just 12 months.

 

During the past year the APTRA executive office has been expanding the work of the Association, which brings a range of benefits to members, including advocacy, training, research and access to a network of industry contacts across the Asia Pacific region.

 

Jaya Singh, APTRA President.

 

The announcement of the additional members was made at the Annual General Meeting, which was held during TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition & Conference in Singapore on Wednesday 14th May.

 

The full-length video interview with APTRA President Jaya Singh and Executive Officer Michael Barrett will be available to view from TRBusiness.com next week.

 

At the meeting Jaya Singh, President APTRA, also announced that two members of the Board, Gerry Munday of Furla and Steffen Brandt of Heinemann Asia Pacific, had resigned due to work commitments. In addition Thibaut de Poutier of Pernod Ricard has resigned since the 2013 AGM and has already been replaced by Ivy Wong of Changi Airport Group.

 

The new members elected by the membership to the Board in their place yesterday are Andrew Ford, VP Global Business Development, DFS Group and Gladys Rodriguez, Corporate Affairs & Communications Director, Worldwide Duty Free at JTI.

 

Jaya Singh, President APTRA: “It is my pleasure to welcome Pashma, Nutworks and Big Retail to this busy association. I would like also to welcome our new members to the Board and to express my sincere appreciation to those standing down for their commitment and hard work during their tenure.

 

“My first term as President has seen exciting plans initiated by my predecessor come to fruition, including the Responsible Retail Training Programme, which is on the brink of region-wide roll-out; the Issues Matrix which will assist us in our protection of the industry; the APTRA database – an essential resource containing details of all the go-to people in the industry; and our research reports containing actionable data on consumer behaviour by channel, product group and nationality.

 

“Our objective is to protect and support the duty free & travel retail industry in Asia Pacific and, while we are making great progress, there is still much to do. New challenges appear at every juncture but if we face them as a single unified body we stand a greater chance of success.”