Chairman's Letter 4th Quarter

With the 2006 year behind us, I want to report to you both the progress and set-backs, which have transpired since the third quarter letter. We are still struggling to get our streamlined committee structure tuned up, but the work demands and company restructuring prevalent in many of our companies has strained the ability of the board members to contribute. In my last letter, I outlined three core services that we are concentrating on improving:

1.) Continue to produce the best industry-focused, low cost annual safety conference for the pulp, paper, converting, forest and recycle industry.

2.) Provide to members a timely and accurate Quarterly Review with industry-specific content unavailable from any other source.

3.) Provide educational seminars (both standard and virtual) to member locations which are topical, needed and specific to issues specific to our industry.

The program put together by Jim Bergeron (Stora Enso) for the Portland, Oregon annual conference (June 10-13, 2007) is another great offering of safety education content appealing to all segments of our industry. You can review the conference schedule and find enrollment information later in this report or on our web site at http://www.ppsa.org/2007conf.htm. We are aware, however, that we still need to improve in the timely development and advertising of our annual safety conferences and this will continue to be a focus in future conferences.
Regarding the goal of timely and accurate Quarterly Reports, we still have a ways to go. The quality and the content of our Quarterly Reports has improved tremendously and as you can see from the inclusion of the year-end Benchmark Survey we can provide industry information which is unique and comprehensive for use by PPSA members. Industry accidents trends continue to decline and we are proud to think we are a part of that trend. As you can tell from the date you received this year-end report, we still have work to do in the area of timeliness. The board authorized the lease of new printing equipment in order to speed the production of the Quarterly Reports as well as reduce production costs, but the installation and start up of this very technical equipment had quite a few glitches. We are hopeful that is behind us and we will produce and distribute Quarterly Reports soon after the end of each quarter in the future. Members can help us meet this timeline by making sure they report their quarterly OSHA statistics in a timely manner. Routinely the Magazine is delayed while waiting for the statistics of a single company, simply because we do not want to leave anyone out.

Finally, the Educational Resource Committee is still struggling with our new streamlined structure and, frankly, the board has poured its time and resources into making sure that this year’s Annual Safety Conference is a success at the expense of seminars development. We have learned from the great success we had in our Atlanta Winder conference that advertising and using cooperative alliances with organizations such as AF&PA and TAPPI is the right thing to do. Pete Masias from Green Bay Packaging has taken over the Committee Chairmanship which includes the development of future seminars. I have confidence in Pete and I know that with the support and assistance of the board and continuing assistance from Neal Leonhard, we can grow this important benefit for our members. Topics which have been of interest in the past have been: OSHA 30 Hour course, OSHA regulations & enforcement activity, NFPA 70E, ergonomics, OSHA Recordkeeping and, of course, Winder Safety. If you have a topic of interest you would like to see offered by PPSA, please contact one of the board members listed at the beginning of this report.

In summary, I want you to know that your board of directors will continue to work to improve the services provided by PPSA and we appreciate your support, suggestions and continued membership. I believe we are moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction.