At the Annual General Assembly that took place in Düsseldorf on the 13th of September, BDV members elected seven new Board Members who will lead the German Vending Association for the next 4 years:

  • Oliver Gengenbach (Karl Gengenbach GmbH & Co. KG)
  • Michael Heuser (Heuser GmbH)
  • Günter Maas (CPI Crane Payment Innovations GmbH, Buxtehude)
  • Wolfgang Müller (J.K.Landgraf KG)
  • Bernd Schumacher (Bernd Schumacher Unternehmens-beratung)
  • Lars Steinmeier (Steinmeier GmbH Getränke-Automaten-Service)
  • Andreas Weiß (J.J.Darboven GmbH & Co. KG)

240 attendees also paid a long and emotional tribute to Karl-Heinz Blum who served for 28 years as BDV-Board Member and 8 years as President. Uwe Danner from the company Jakob Gerhardt got the German Vending Award for his exceptional career and contribution to the vending industry.

The General Assembly was also a good opportunity for Aris Kaschefi, BDV Director General, to present the activities of the Association especially linked to the upcoming legislation on single-use cups and fiscal auditing. He also presented the new visual of the BDV website which should better show what the industry is doing and in which locations the machines are placed. The German Association also managed to recruit 34 new members since autumn 2018 with 50% of them being operators.

The formal part was followed by three speeches; the first one being about the future of shopping by Michael Gerling (EHI Retail Institute), the second one about the new German operator study by Sonja Klein (BDV) and the third and last one about self-marketing by Andreas Hoffstadt. In the evening, the attendees were invited to join the famous ‘Rustikaler Abend’ in the club ‘Nachtresidenz’ in Düsseldorf downtown.