Raimundo Varela works as the Executive Vice-President Commercial & Supply for CMPC, a large forestry company with over 4 million tons of Pulp production and mills in Chile and Brazil. Raimundo has been with CMPC since 2014, the first 3 years as Supply Chain Director followed by 3 years as Commercial Director, 5 years as CEO CMPC Celulosa and since August 2025 in his current position.
Previously, Raimundo spent 15 years with ED&F Man (large commodity trading company) were he held positions as Managing Director for Asia (based in Singapore 5 years), Managing Director for Americas (based in the USA for 4 years) and Business Development Director (based in the UK for 2 years).
Raimundo is a very international business executive with deep experience in the commodity industry. He is very driven, innovative and a proven leader of high performance teams. He holds an Industrial Engineer Degree from Universidad Catolica in Chile and an AMP degree from Henley Business School in the UK.

Kevin Mason works as the Managing Director of ERA Forest Products Research. ERA is a BC-based independent research firm which provides economic and investment analysis on the forest-product industry to clients in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. The firm’s clients include leading forest-products companies and governments, as well as a wide variety of institutional investors managing both equity and debt.

Starting his career in finance, Mr. Mason progressed through various banking positions. In 1997, he joined ERA and proceeded to attain the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. His focus at ERA Forest Products Research has been to enhance and expand the company’s analysis of global industry dynamics and to provide investment coverage on various companies and forest-product commodities for the firm’s diverse client base.

Kevin holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of British Columbia, has been a CFA charterholder since 2001, and is a member of both the Okanagan and Vancouver Societies of Financial Analysts.

Prabhakar Venneti has a career spanning over three decades in pulp & paper industry in India. His past assignments include Paper & Paper board sales, Consumer packaging, Business development, Global Sourcing, Materials management, Procurement, Supply chain & Operations planning. He currently serves as Executive Vice President (EVP) Sales & Marketing, Commercial for ITC PSPD and is based at Hyderabad, India. He has in the past spearheaded ITC’s Well-being out of Waste program (WOW), played a key role in spreading awareness about waste recycling and enhancing the recovery rates. He has also served as the co-chair for CII’s (Confederation of Indian Industry Telangana state chapter) sustainability panel. In his current role apart from Sales in Marketing of Paper boards, specialty papers & procurement, he also heads the sustainable packaging ‘vertical’ driving new technologies and products for substitution of single use plastics specially in food supply chain. 

Matt Frei is an acclaimed British-German television journalist, news presenter, interviewer and author, renowned for his global reporting and analysis. He currently serves as Presenter for Channel 4 News in the UK and hosts a Saturday morning talk show on LBC Radio. He is revered as one of the most distinguished broadcast journalists in the UK whose international career has spanned some of the most significant global news events, amassing countless awards and industry recognition.

Frei’s broadcasting career began in 1989 at the BBC where he served as a correspondent across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, including in Bonn - starting on the very day the Berlin Wall fell. He moved to Washington DC in 2002 to become Washington DC correspondent and in 2005, reported from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The following year he became the first presenter of BBC World News American, and hosted BBC Radio 4’s Americana programme for three years.

In 2011, Matt would move to Channel 4 to take up the role of Washington Correspondent. He quickly became a familiar face across their news and current affairs output, producing documentaries such as The American Road Trip: Obama’s Story and The Mad World of Donald Trump. An interview with Donald Trump in Trump Tower (2013) has become one of the most recognised moments in Channel 4 News history.

By 2014, Frei was appointed Europe Editor and anchor of Channel 4’s flagship 7 pm news bulletin. Under this stewardship, the network has delivered outstanding coverage of the Ukraine 

crisis, reporting from the MH17 crash site, Crimea tensions, and Kyiv, and later the Russian invasion in 2022 which saw him win a BAFTA. His interview with President Zelenskyy in early 2024 remains one of the most news-making global interviews with the embattled Ukrainian leader since the start of the war, including the iconic call to President Trump to ‘end the war in 24 hours’.

Frei now serves as Channel 4 News’ lead international anchor, fronting major political debates and global events, including every US Presidential election of the past two decades.

Frei’s journalism has seen him earn numerous international accolades, including an International Emmy for Channel 4 News reporting on the Israel-Hamas War (2024), Hong Kong (2020) and earlier Syria coverage (2017). He is a two-time winner of the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year award (2015 & 2015), alongside winning a Peabody, Dupont and Amnesty Award for his work at the BBC. Further honours include back-to-back BAFTA awards for coverage of the Ukraine war (2023) and the Gaza conflict (2024), as well as the Charles Wheeler Award (2022).

Alongside his journalism career, Matt is an acclaimed author of the 2008 book Only in America - written during his time as Washington Correspondent at the BBC. He is a regular media commentator and speaker at international events, and later this year will deliver the prestigious Steve Hewlett Memorial Lecture, in partnership with the Royal Television Society.

Born in Germany, Frei’s parents settled in Essen after leaving Silesia in the post-war period. When he was about ten years old (1973), the family relocated to the UK. He was educated at Westminster School, then studied history and Spanish at St Peter’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1986. Frei is married to the artist Penny Quested and lives in London.

(photo credit Stephen Voss)

Tom is the Managing Director of Hawkins Wright. Over the past 25 years he has undertaken regular private client consultancy assignments on a wide range of topics related to the pulp and paper sector. He is the co-author of the Outlook for Market Pulp and Pulpwatch and is the principal author of the Asian multi-client studies. Foremost amongst these; Defining the China Market for Pulp Paper & Board was first published in 2002 and enjoys industry-wide recognition. Tom has also helped to establish two major events in the industry calendar; London Symposium in association with the BWPA, and Shanghai Pulp Week in association with CPICC. Tom travels widely, both in the course of market research and also as a frequent speaker to private meetings and industry conferences.

Oliver is a seasoned industry analyst and consultant, boasting over two decades of expertise in the global pulp and paper sector. Since joining Hawkins Wright in 2007, he has played a pivotal role as one of the editors of Pulpwatch, the firm's monthly newsletter. He is also the co-author of the Outlook for Market Pulp service and the principal author of the Outlook for Dissolving Pulp. His leadership in consultancy projects spans feasibility studies for pulp mills across Latin America, Russia, and Southeast Asia, and he is a frequent presenter at industry conferences.