The European Consortium of the Organic-Based Fertilizer Industry (ECOFI) elected a new President, Quentin Protsenko, on Friday 7 December at the 2018 General Assembly. Quentin Protsenko is the Regulatory Manager at FRAYSSINET, one of the biggest organic fertilizer producers in France. Mr Protsenko has been involved in ECOFI for several years and has been engaged in its advocacy regarding the forthcoming fertilising products regulation. Mr Protsenko takes over the Presidency from Felice Lo Faso, Managing Director at an Italian organo-mineral fertilizer producing company, SCAM.

Chiara Manoli (ILSA) was also elected as ECOFI Vice-President and will support Mr Protsenko’s work as President over the next two years. She is responsible for product registration and organic certification at ILSA SpA (Italy), where she has been employed as a researcher since 2012. Her work has increasingly focused on regulatory affairs, and she has been actively following the development of the forthcomingEU regulation on fertilising products. She has been attending the European Commission’s Fertilizer Working Group meetings as an ECOFI representative since March 2014. Ms. Manoli replaces outgoing Vice-President Olivier Derome (Sopropêche).

Speaking after his election, Mr Protsenko thanked ECOFI members for their trust and support, and underlined the importance of continued work on the fertilising products regulation going forward. He welcomed the recent compromise agreement found on the text of the regulation, but said it was now time “to work with regulators to continue refining the regulation to ensure that it caters for our products which are already safely on the market today”.

[Photo from left to right: Outgoing VP Olivier Derome, newly-elected President Quentin Protsenko, outgoing President Felice Lo Faso and new VP Chiara Manoli]