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Recognising the interests of local countries and cultures will transform our trade association, says APRA Europe chairman Daniel Koehler. So let’s grow the remanufacturing community, together

Last year, APRA Europe chairman Dr. Daniel Koehler announced his bold aspirations for the organisation, which includes more local and regional activity (‘APRA Europe moves to the next level’, ReMaTecNews June/July 2018). One key element will be the creation of APRA Ambassadors for distinct countries. He now calls for volunteers to become APRA Ambassadors and gives more details about the idea.

“Time flies and the challenging project plan for my ‘chairman’s strategy’ turns into reality step by step,” Koehler says. Integral to his vision is what he calls the localisation strategy. This means improving the local physical presence - or at least the perception of it – thus giving consideration to the manifold cultural and language backgrounds inside European countries or regions.

“We simply have an issue reaching out to small French or Spanish remanufacturers, for example,” Koehler explains. “They may want - or, due to lack of language skills, simply have – to be contacted in their local languages. They want to be fully understood and appreciated in terms of business habits, local branch requirements or national legal frameworks.”
In total, the localisation strategy aims at:

• Enhancing the recognition of APRA Europe and remanufacturing among European countries
• Considering local requirements, habits, rules and languages for advancing APRA Europe’s positioning
• Providing better services, e.g. through native language contact persons and marketing material
• Addressing smaller companies
• Growing the numbers in our remanufacturing network in order to get more weight in official discussions, hearings, working groups and political movements

For the implementation of the localisation strategy, Koehler counts on future APRA Ambassadors. These can be any employee of an APRA member company. He or she will represent APRA Europe in their home countries – of course, with the support of the APRA Europe board and office.

Their duties will include such tasks as translation of marketing material, answering requests in their local language, promoting APRA in their country, gathering interesting market information for publication and – above all - being an interface between APRA and the local associations, institutions,
media partners and so on.

In return, volunteers will benefit from better market access and recognition of their own company as well as the reputation of being an ambassador for the organisation. The names of APRA Ambassadors will be published and officially communicated via APRA’s manifold communication and marketing channels.

In order to plant and grow his localization strategy, the chairman of APRA Europe now calls for volunteer APRA Ambassadors: “Let us grow the remanufacturing community, together."

For more information, please contact europe@apra.org