On the 2 November 2022, the university partners of the Transfire team met up in Peterborough to discuss progress at the 18 month stage; half way through the 3 year project. It was great to meet up with everyone in person particularly as, as the project started during Covid, it has been harder than usual to get to know everyone on the project.

Principal Investigator, Professor Mark Jolly, kicked off the day by welcoming everyone. It was great to have the tremendous industry expertise of our Transfire project and steering group Chairs Jon Bolton and Paul Booth CBE at the day with us. Jon was formerly Chair of British Steel and Director of Tata Steel and is currently Chair of the Materials Processing Institute. Paul has been a Director at ICI, has sat on many industry boards and is currently President of the Society for the Chemical Industry.

Jon and Paul kindly offered to host a visit to Teeside for us as a team (Ciel, Mike, Jo and I) in January to visit local Foundation Industry sites, which we are really looking forward to.

It was also great to have EDI team members Ciel and Mike there. As it was Mike’s first meeting he spoke to everyone about his work on the project. A big part of Mike’s work at this stage is visiting Foundation Industry sites and Mike asked everyone to let him know if they had a site visit planned that he could join.

All in all it was a great day to get together to catch up with other project partners and hear what everyone has been up to. I’m looking forward to the next one already!