AREA names Coen van de Sande as President

At its recent annual general assembly held in Athens, European contractors’ association AREA unanimously elected the Netherlands’ Coen van de Sande as President, replacing Marco Buoni from Italian Association ATF. Grzegorz Michalski from Poland was named Vice President.

‘’Legislation and standardisation became more and more an EU playing field in the last two decades,” says van de Sande, who is Director of the Dutch Association NVKL.

“EU-wide cooperation between associations of contractors through AREA is crucial to make the voice of contractors heard in all relevant EU stakeholders like Commission, Parliament, Council and other umbrella associations in our sector. Without AREA we wouldn’t be in any position to influence the development and implementation of legislation and standardisation.”  

AREA is the European association of refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump (RACHP) contractors. Established in 1989, AREA voices the interests of 23 national associations from 20 countries representing 13,000 companies employing 110,000 people and with an annual turnover approaching €23 billion (AUD$34.3 billion).

In addition to van de Sande, Buoni and Michalski, the board also includes Seamus Kerr from IRI (Ireland) as Treasurer, Thanos Biris from HUFGAS (Greece), Stepan Stojanov from SCHKT (Czech Republic), and Espen Rønning from VKE (Norway).

AREA also welcomes Claire Grossmann as the new Secretary General, taking over from Olivier Janin, who held the position for the past 14 years.

The meeting in Greece for the first in-person gathering for AREA in two years.