The 28th World LPG Forum - from Asia with love

Let's start with a few rough numbers just to give you all an idea of how big and significant the forum is in the LPG world:

• 1500 people overall participated in the event, both as speakers and as delegates;
• 81 companies took part in the exhibition that traditionally accompanies the conference part;
• the top 5 most represented countries were Singapore, India, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia.

© WLPGAThe World LPG Forum offers very high quality sessions. World class, you might say

In accordance with the motto, the focus was on global opportunities for LPG and the role of this alternative fuel in the future. The main roundtable discussion started with the topic of driving factors behind the switch from conventional motor fuels to autogas. Parallelly held sessions were devoted to global changes in the LPG sector, as well as strategies and good practices regarding raising awareness among decision makers as far as switching to LPG (as motor, cooking and heating fuel) is concerned.

Another important topic was the question of synergies between LPG and natural gas. The WLPGA (World LPG Association) and the IGU (International Gas Union) agree that there are numerous synergies between these two alternative gaseous fuels and the two organisations will closely cooperate to best use the resulting opportunities.

© WLPGAThe exhibition always serves to show the industry's latest and greatest in a given year

The forum was also the place where the inaugural meeting of the WINLPG (Women in LPG) Global Network was held. The feedback from this first gathering will be used to plan further steps of the new structure. And obviously there was also the GTC (Global Technology Conference), where the LPG sector's latest innovations were proposed. The best ideas will receive the 2016 WLPGA Innovation Award, to be presented in Istanbul during the 29^th World LPG Forum in 2016. Meanwhile, in Singapore the 2015 WLPGA Innovation Award winner was announced. It was Mark Walls, of the Southwest Research Institute, who presented his paper – Direct Liquid Propane Injection on a Modern GDI Engine – in Miami on the 27^th World LPG Forum. The runner up was Ms Anne Feudner, of Kohler Power Systems, who presented her paper – Application of Propane to the Mobile Rental Generator Market.

WLPGA already invites everybody interested to participate in next year's edition of the forum. Its structure will likely be similar to that of the Singapore event, but given it will shift from Asia to Turkey (the forum is a "traveling" event), it will also shift thematically to Europe, still a major user of LPG, primarily as motor fuel. We have just waved Singapore goodbye and we already can't wait for Istanbul...