AFTA has been very busy over the last month with Rachel getting used to the new position and memberships renewals on the new software being sorted as well as the Trade Show prospectus being sent out and starting to fill up.

There were a couple of big decisions the board had to make this month, and with a little discussion, came out with some good outcomes. I will go through these below.

The disaster committee is gearing up for its first meeting next week and we are heading to one of the fire effected regions in Merimbula for this meeting. Thanks to those committee members for making themselves available and giving up their time to see what we can help with.

With the meeting coming up it was time to organise what money is to be allocated where, the board has come up with the following distribution:

75% – Bushfire Area Southern NSW & Western VIC
12.5% – NSW Drought regions
12.5% – to be allocated before end of June

AFTA will be contacting and forming a Drought committee in the next month.

In regards to what the money will be spent on, as we said the money has to be used to attract visitors with the intent of Fishing and we will know more after the first Bushfire Committee meeting.

The appeal is still active and live, so if you were waiting now is the time to donate, thanks to those who have donated and Tackle World has donated since my last list, so thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Tackle World group and everyone who has donated so far.

If you would like to contribute head to https://www.gofundme.com/f/australian-fishing-industry-disaster-appeal

On the back of some government grants that AFTA could potentially apply for in relations to angler communication AFTA has decided to proceed with a self funded trial of in store Kiosk’s. These kiosks will be a basic short questionnaire to find out a little more about the recreational angler and their habits. The initial costs are expect to be between $10 – $15k and will purchase a initial 6 stations.

AFTA will approach suitable retail locations to put these in this year and hope to gain some feedback from stores and anglers to see if the Kiosk surveys will work and get traction, if they do work and we get positive good data then there will be a larger scale role out funded by government agencies.

This is a great chance for AFTA to get access to raw industry data previously unavailable and hope that retailers will get behind this initiative. All data will be made available for AFTA members.

Yours sincerely

Michael Starkey
President
Australian Fishing Trade Association