Rediscovering VOCs

The staff at the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) is terrible at throwing anything away. In a recent “tidy up,” we generated 15 sacks of wastepaper, which were sent away to be shredded and recycled. However, before we did this, everything was packed up, sent to be scanned and stored on our ever-expanding cloud drive […]

Have we reached “peak aerosol”?

In April, the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) completed its filling statistics survey for 2023; the volume filled was roughly at the same level in 2023 as it was in 2022—just over 1.4 billion cans. Aerosol filling in the UK has been bouncing around the 1.3 to 1.5 billion mark for about 10 years now. […]

What is innovation?

On April 17, the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) will host our 6th face-to-face Innovation Day at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, UK. It has grown from a relatively humble event back in 2017 to become an important date for us at BAMA. It gives us not only the opportunity to think about how the […]

UK aerosol regulations

Governments and regulators often consult with stakeholders about legislation, but it’s not often Industry is specifically asked how regulations could be improved to make “life easier.” However, this is just what is happening in the UK. The Office for Product Safety & Standards (OPSS), which sits within the Dept. for Business & Trade (DBT), recently […]

NMVOC Pathway

Many of you will realize that the UK is often different to many other countries. For example, we are seen to drive on the “wrong” side of the road. However, prior to the French Revolution, it was common to ride horses on the left-hand side of the road in continental Europe. This was because most […]

BAMA Innovation Day

Way back in 2017, BAMA organized its first Innovation Day at the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester. Patrick Heskins, BAMA Chief Executive, remembers how the whole thing started and summarizes the 2023 program. “When I was interviewed for the position of Chief Executive, I mentioned to the interview panel that I believed innovation […]

The UK Regulatory Landscape 2023

Politics in the United Kingdom (UK) suffered a little bit of turmoil during 2022. We had three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors of the Exchequer and three Secretaries of State at the Dept. for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Dept. for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Not satisfied with months of […]

35 years and counting…

Just over 35 years ago, I left my first job as an analytical chemist and started work in the customer service lab of a company called Aerosol Research & Development (ARD), an aerosol valve manufacturer based just outside my home city of Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. I had no idea at that […]

Consumers & refillable aerosols

In 2019, in conjunction with the French Aerosol Association (CFA), The British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) embarked on a series of workshops to discuss the potential for refillable aerosols. This is, and continues to be, a difficult discussion for industry as we are obliged by regulation, for clear safety reasons, to make packaging that must […]

UK aerosol industry performance exceeds expectations…

They say every cloud has a silver lining: the 2020 thunderstorm bestowed a little of this on the aerosol industry, as The British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association’s (BAMA) annual filling survey demonstrated the strength and versatility of this sector, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. National lockdowns and closure of non-essential activities impacted everyone. The […]