Championing change

Stan Higgins is a formidable voice for the process sectors. As director of the North East  of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC), he has spent over 20 years promoting businesses that he describes as some of the most vital to the UK economy. His love of the region is matched only by his enthusiasm for the industry.

It’s a passion that appeared at a young age. One of Higgins’ earliest memories is visiting a nuclear plant at the weekends where his dad was a supervising manager. “I could always remember my pride,” he said. “At dinner parties, I used to be able to stand up as an eight year old and tell people how a reactor works…I’ve always been interested in chemistry and engineering.”

But it wasn’t until leaving school that Higgins understood the value of studying these subjects. At 16, Higgins started work as a laboratory assistant at Windscale nuclear power station.

95% of primary school teachers feel uncomfortable teaching science. In a technological age, that can’t be right

“To be fair, I never really understood the value of qualifications until I went to work,” he said. “As a teenager, I was more interested in scooters, football and girls.”

A turning point came a few months into Higgins’ new job while he was analysing a sample of urine. He was reportedly asked by a graduate whether he wanted to be doing this for the rest of his life.

At that moment, he made a decision to take up an opportunity offered by his then employers, British Nuclear Fuel, to do two night classes a week in chemistry and further his career.

The extra work paid off and Higgins soon landed a scholarship at York University. Here, he studied a course set up by ex-plant managers with modules in chemistry, economics and technology.

“While I was at university, I had a kind of idea about an organic chemical process which happened to be correct,” recalls Higgins. “I was told I should write up this idea as a PhD.”

After gaining his PhD, Higgins began work with Reckitt & Coleman as a chemist. But he soon discovered his passions lay elsewhere within chemical plants and so joined GlaxoSmithKline as an assistant production manager.

Later, this experience would be combined with his skills for managing people when he joined independently-owned business Peboc in North Wales as managing director.

Peboc grew from a £5m business to one that generated revenues of £25m a year. It won two Queen’s Awards for Industry and later sold to multinational Eastman.  After a brief spell living in Tennessee to work for the company, Higgins returned to the UK and was headhunted to be chief executive and director of NEPIC.

“At that time, companies in the North East of England were feeling that their industry was not understood. People thought it was a dying sector,” said Higgins. “Fragmentation of the industry hadn’t helped. So they concluded they should form an organisation to pull them together, represent the industrial community and hopefully build a growth agenda.”

Higgins did just that and grew NEPIC from zero members in 2003 to over 400 today. The organisation now has a turnover of about £1.5m and around 25 employees. By 2016, NEPIC member companies are hoping to invest an additional £7bn into the region.

Higgins claims the North East process industries are the driving force of the UK economy. “I think people don’t realise that for the chemical process industries in the UK, the output has grown year on year since the 1980s. It hasn’t declined,” he said.

“Very interestingly these industries have brought in a positive balance of payment to the tune of £20m a day, while all other manufacturing has had a negative impact of £200m per day.”

But despite these impressive figures, Higgins claims he has an uphill battle on his hands to convince both private and public investors of the merits of the process sectors.

“Banks are very risk-averse at the moment,” he said. “The government has been trying to bring in some new products that will, in certain circumstances, provide financial guarantees for very significant investments. But I know several investors that are really fed-up with the UK and are taking their ideas elsewhere.”

Alongside lack of investor confidence is the growing skills gap. The £7bn expansion of the North East process industries, together with the current demographics within the sectors, means that it will need to attract some16,000 new employees.

“This is a huge challenge,” said Higgins. “In the UK we’ve got 650 parliamentary members. 600 of them have no understanding of science and technology. That gives us a real problem as a society. It’s the same among the civil service.”

“We have a similar problem in the community where science and technology teaching has declined very rapidly,” he added.

“The data shows that 95% of primary school teachers feel uncomfortable teaching science. In a technological age, that can’t be right. As a result, children are coming through school and not enough of them understand scientific subjects.”

Recalling his enthusaism as an eight-year old, Higgins wants the new generation of young engineers to feel the same way passion and pride he felt when impressing dinners guests with his knowledge of nuclear reactors. “We really have so much more to offer,” he said.