F E AT U R E
The Independent
Vape Industry
Conference 2017
-The MacDonald Hotel,
Manchester. April 27.
BY LEO FORFAR
The Independent Vape Industry Conference
2017 took place in Manchester on April 27 and
Vapouround Magazine was the official media
partner for the event.
This was billed as a ‘must attend’ event for
vendors, distributors, importers, manufacturers
and it certainly did not disappoint.
It was organised by the IBVTA and was the
first conference aimed specifically at the
independent vape industry which focused
exclusively on issues of direct relevance to
the independent vape industry.
Vapouround Magazine’s Leo Forfar spent
the day at the conference and these are his
reports of the event.
Introducing the IBVTA
The vaping world’s most important business
meeting begins
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks
were striking ten.
On April 29, a who’s who from every frontier
of the vape industry filled the Mezzanine
Suite of Manchester’s Macdonald Hotel for
the milestone meeting that was the inaugural
IBVTA conference.
The gathering included business owners,
professors, researchers, lords, councillors,
insurance experts, chemists, sales and
marketing co-ordinators and all the other
strategists and architects that make vaping
what it is. The day’s agenda would be to identify
the issues facing the industry and explain
how best they can be understood, quantified,
challenged, resolved and chronicled.
The eight-and-a-half-hour procession consisted
firstly of an introductory overview by Managing
Director of Totally Wicked and IBVTA Chairman
Fraser Cropper, alongside Professor Riccardo
Polosa, Conference Chairman and Director
82 ISSUE 11 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE
“We’re not only promoting but safeguarding, and we’re doing it together”
of the Institute for Internal and Emergency
Medicine of the University of Catania in Italy.
Vapouround Magazine caught up with three
of the main speakers before the conference
formally began.
Professor Polosa spoke of the need to get
across the message that vaping saves lives.
He said: “Though the industry needs to evolve,
it must remember the good and vital service it
provides for public health, and be more vocal
at the government level because it is saving
lives. We must never forget that.”
Matthew Moden, Director of Libery Flights,
said it was great that businesses could work
together for the greater good of the vaping
industry.
He said: “The work done at the IBVTA just to
get here is a testament to all the hard work
and it’s good to see so many businesses
effectively in competition with each other put
aside their differences, come together and
recognise the symbiotic nature of what we’re