Plastics & Rubber World - November/December 2019 - 46

Plastics industry awards 2019

ambassador to the Plastics industry

an industry steward

(From left) Shaun Williamson, Nigel Flowers and editor of PRW magazine, Julian
Buckley

T

Presented by

46

WWW.PRW.COM | November/december 2019

he winner of this year's Ambassador
to the Plastics Industry award was
Nigel Flowers, managing director at
Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK.
Flowers has been involved in the UK
plastics industry for more than 40 years.
In a write up of his career achievements,
a close colleague described him as an 'industry lifer'.
Having started his career as a maintenance engineer at Hozelock, Flowers went
on to become a field service engineer and
then a service manager before joining Sumitomo (SHI) Demag as a technical manager.
Since joining the company in 1985,
he has gone on to take a leadership role,
achieving significant market growth despite a series of economic downturns.
His business acumen now a matter of
record, Flowers has also championed apprentice programmes across the plastics
industry, while also acting as a mentor
within the company.
Asked what stood out as career highlights, Flowers responded: "Working to
develop better machinery safety standards under ISO, improving safety for our
industry's service teams and creating the
Sumitomo (SHI) Demag Training Academy
have all been recent high points."
He continued: "But in reality, the real
highlight has been having the opportunity
to work with some great teams (customers, suppliers and partners). In the end, it
is people who make the difference and I
have been fortunate enough to work with
the best." 

In addition to his day job, Flowers has
also served on a series of industry and
government panels, with particular attention given to skills development and the
setting of industry standards.
Further to this, our winner has worked
with the PMMDA for more than 27 years;
in 2016, Flowers became the organisation's president and remains in the role to
this day.
As Nikki Williams, secretary of the PMMDA said: "[Nigel] is a great president, he
has been a supportive and professional
'go to' person throughout his time on the
committee. There are times where I don't
know what I would've done without him."
Looking forward, what does this year's
ambassador award winner believe is the
most effective way to counter negative
press about plastics? "While the industry
needs to be fully behind initiatives to reduce waste and change public behaviour,
we also need to remind ourselves how
useful plastic is across everyday life."
To support applications across automotive, medical, electronics and myriad
other applications, Flowers said it is important to take a balanced view. A task he
believes should be further supported by
the media and industry groups such as
the British Plastics Federation.
While Nigel Flowers has already had an
extended career in plastics, we hope this
industry steward will be with us for many
years to come.
Congratulations, Nigel, from all of your
friends and colleagues around the country!
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Plastics & Rubber World - November/December 2019

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