New Year’s OBE for Higgins

STAN HIGGINS, an Associate Fellow of IChemE, has been awarded an OBE in the UK’s New Year’s Honours 2018.

Higgins, who was chief executive of the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) from 2003 until his retirement in 2017, receives the OBE for “services to the chemical process industry”. He has worked to promote all parts of the UK’s chemical process manufacturing industry, including chemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) for his work.

“I am delighted to receive this unexpected honour. I recognise that it is an accolade reached by standing on the shoulders of many mentors and colleagues that have encouraged me throughout my 48 years in the industry. There have been mentors from across the chemical industry that guided my career; colleagues in the NEPIC team and membership who have supported me and worked selflessly on behalf of the chemical process sector; and there are the professors and tutors at York University who made chemistry come to life for me. I am grateful to all of them for their support and guidance throughout my career,” said Higgins.

Higgins remains a non-executive director at NEPIC and is also a non-executive director at Industrial Technology Systems (ITS), an automation and instrumentation company, and management consultancy RTC. He is also a senior advisor to speciality chemicals firm Tradebe and also to statistical analysis software provider SAS-JMP. Higgins is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of York, where he sits on the board of its Centre for Industry Education Collaboration to promote its Children Challenging Industry educational programme.