In July 2009, the Society of Dyers and Colourists (SDC) joined forces with its associate organisation SDC India to stage a global event entitled ‘Sustainability in Coloration: Vision 2020’. The conference was aimed specifically at senior decision makers – chief executives, directors, consultants and dyehouse managers. Held in Goa, India, it was attended by nearly 300 people and addressed key issues facing the coloration industry.
The event attracted international speakers, many from global household name companies, including Levi Strauss and BASF, as well as India-based organisations such as Grasim, Alok Industries and Technopak. Presentations and networking sessions were held on two consecutive days, and SCI’s prestigious Ivan Levinstein Memorial Award and Lecture were also presented.
The SCI Levinstein Memorial Lecture and Award was endowed by Dr Herbert Levinstein to commemorate the life and achievements of his father, Ivan Levinstein – a pioneer in the dyestuff industry. Ivan was only 19 when he began manufacturing aniline dyestuffs and other products. His family were long-established dyemakers in Germany and he came to England in 1864, establishing himself as a dye-maker at Blackley, Manchester. In Manchester, Ivan became associated with the SCI and at its formation in 1883, sat on the Committee of the then SCI Manchester Section, now SCI’s Liverpool & North West Regional Group.
Derek Heywood, Vice Chairman of SCI’s Board of Trustees, and member of the Liverpool & North West Committee, presented the Levinstein Award to this year’s worthy recipient. Derek himself started his career in textile printing and has since worked in textile mills throughout the world, becoming a consultant to major companies and garment manufacturers. At the SDC conference, Derek also chaired the technical session on SDC colour trends, and later visited Clariant’s laboratories, to give a series of workshops on textile finishing to their technical and sales staff. Derek presented Roy Gordon with the Levinstein Award.
Roy is a technical development consultant at Nearchimica in Legnano, Italy, where he works on promoting textile auxiliaries in export markets. He has been in the textile dyeing industry for forty-five years, and began his career in the dyehouse laboratory of N.Corah (later Textured Jersey) in Leicester in 1964. He has since worked in a commission dyehouse in Denmark; at Fielding & Johnson in Leicester; Corah, South Africa; South Knighton Dyeworks in Leicester and at ICI, where he developed many of the ICI textile auxiliaries used today.
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