This will be my last quarterly message as the President of EHEDG. After servicing the community as President since 2016, my successor Hein Timmerman takes over my position on January 1st, 2023. Over the course of many years, Hein has earned much respect for his longstanding commitment to EHEDG, exhibited by his voluntary work as Chairman of the EHEDG Sub-Committee Product Portfolio and the EHEDG Regional Section Belgium, and as an actively contributing member of various EHEDG Working Groups. 

Hein knows EHEDG in and out. He understands what this community is about, what makes its members tick, and what connects us all: our mutual respect for each other’s expertise and our shared passion for hygienic engineering and design, and for the benefits that it brings to food safety, quality, productivity, and sustainability. It is why I am confident that he will continue to lead EHEDG forward by serving a growing number of EHEDG members around the world. 

Added Membership Value: E-learning     
Now let’s move on to the new developments that EHEDG set in motion. Some of them have already resulted in new practical guidance for our members, others will start yielding results in 2023 and beyond. Regardless of if you are a longstanding or a new member of this global hygienic design community, you may expect to see the value of your EHEDG membership continually increase. 

I should start out with addressing our plan to launch hygienic design e-learning courses. An online training platform to share modular modules has been established and will be ready for implementation by the end of the first quarter of 2023. The hygienic design e-learning courses will allow EHEDG members to access training and education materials whenever and wherever they want. They will not replace the existing face-to-face EHEDG hygienic design courses, but will complement them and will help EHEDG to spread hygienic design knowledge across a wider group of professionals in food industry companies all over the world.

Added Membership Value: EHEDG Guideline Documents    
Meanwhile, we have been looking into options to optimise the effectiveness of our guideline document development process. Since the introduction of the 5-year renewal program for EHEDG Guideline Documents, many EHEDG Working Groups will need to update their guidelines. Consequently, we expect to see an increasing number of guideline updates being published in 2023 and beyond. The new guideline documents are also issued in line with newly harmonised editorial formats. This combined effort ensures our members of a better access to up-to-date guidance in user-friendly formats. 

Added Membership Value: EHEDG Certification    
In 2022, after a long development, review, and implementation phase, EHEDG is pleased to announce that three EHEDG Authorised Testing Laboratories in Europe now started offering the first open process cleaning testing and certification procedures. This means that equipment developers can now also test and certify the external cleanability of their machinery. Another milestone is the establishment of an EHEDG Testing Laboratory in Japan, which provides companies in Asia and Oceania with an additional service facility to test and certify their components and equipment for the industry.

Added Membership Value: Industry Connections
After years of being unable to meet in person, we were happy to reconnect at the EHEDG World Congress 2022 in Munich, where food industry stakeholders, food equipment suppliers, developers and system integrators, scientists, and legislators from all over the world discussed four specific topics: “The digitalisation of food industry processes”, “Requirements and solutions for the food factory of the future”, Hygienic design meets digitalisation”, and "Intelligent food production". I thank all of you for coming, and a particularly I thank our sponsors that patiently stayed with us despite of the several postponements of the event forced caused by the pandemic.

The next EHEDG World Congress will take place in 2024 in France, and in 2023, EHEDG will organise a global EHEDG Online Congress. In 2023, EHEDG also plans to hold a Plenary Meeting in Turkey. Both the World Congress as the Online Congress are accessible for members and non-members, while the Plenary Meeting in Turkey is for members only, primarily addressed to Regional Section and Working Group (co-)chairs. Additionally, I am happy to announce the appointing of 4 new members in the EHEDG Advisory Board. Together with the 2 continuing members of this board, they will help steer the development of the offerings and services towards the emerging needs of the food industry.

Above developments are examples of essential tools for the industry to strengthen their food safety cultures. I think it is fair to state that there is a growing market awareness that the food industry must produce safe food in a more efficient and sustainable way to suit the needs of a rapidly growing global population, and that hygienic engineering and design plays a key role to get there. During the many years of my presidency, I have strived to make sure that EHEDG is well-prepared to support this development. EHEDG is financially healthy, steadily growing and has a strong foundation for the new EHEDG President Hein Timmerman to build upon. I wish him much success and good fortune in the coming years, and I hope that I may continue to be a part of this great community for many years to come. 

Wishing you all a healthy, safe, and successful year 2023.
EHEDG President Ludvig Josefsberg