Message from the Secretary-General
I write within days of returning from the highly successful Council 02 held in Nice from 9 to 13 June, at the same time as the United Nations Ocean Conference was meeting there.
Progress
This session opened with remarks from our President, Marcos Almeida, of Brazil who welcomed new councillors from the People’s Republic of China and from Japan.
I was able to report that our Membership now stands at a total of 346 organisations including 39 Member States.
We have welcomed the following new members: as Affiliate Industrial –
Boyas Del Sur, Venezuela; Carlier Chaines SA, France and Baroda Polyform Private Limited, India. To Affiliate Membership: Dragados y Balizamientos S.A, of Argentina
The World Wide Academy
The World-Wide Academy has reported record training activity with over 280 trainees studying our curricula in 2024. Numerous missions and training sessions were delivered widely and so far this year our Academy teams have spread the word in Honduras, Iraq, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Recognition of the Academy’s capabilities is growing now that we have achieved IGO status thereby enabling IALA to expand capacity building.
Publications
On publications thirteen new Guidelines and Recommendation were approved and the Council was briefed on the activities of the technical committees and other activities.
Since our last edition of this e-Bulletin we have issued the annual report for 2024 and I commend it to you. The link is here:
https://www.iala.int/content/uploads/2025/06/ANNUAL-REPORT-2024-BD-Double-pages.pdf
Headquarters
With regard to staffing we now have fifteen full-time employees, with two new posts planned: for a Document Controller & Legal Advisor, and an Executive Assistant.
Concerning our HQ situation in St Germain-en-Laye we plan to relocate to a new building as we need more space to accommodate our increase in activities. Progress here will be reported in due course.
World Marine Aids to Navigation Day
On 1 July our international community will celebrate World Marine Aids to Navigation Day and I look forward to hearing how our Members commemorate this important date in our calendar. Here we promote awareness of the importance of marine aids to navigation and IALA’s role in improving and harmonising standards worldwide for the efficiency of navigation and protection of the environment.
This year’s event is being hosted in the UK at Trinity House in London and at its East Coast base, Harwich, between 30 June and 2 July.
Trinity House and the Northern Lighthouse Board will be co-hosting World Marine Aids to Navigation Day 2025 on behalf of the Department for Transport (DfT), the UK Government Department that now represents the UK at IALA.
The theme for this year’s event is The role of physical aids to navigation in a digital future.
Once again I encourage all our readers to keep in touch with IALA and its website here: https://www.iala.int/
You will be informed through the website of forthcoming meetings, new publications, our news and, of course, the e-Bulletin which has proved to be of value in spreading the word. You may wish to contribute an article. If so Audrey Guinault will be pleased to hear from you at: audrey.guinault@iala-aism.org
All good wishes for your missions ahead, ashore or afloat. I expect we will meet again soon.
Francis Zachariae.