Dr Higgins has over 45 years of experience in the chemistry based process industries in technical, commercial and leadership roles. He set up the NEPIC Cluster in 2003 and it now has over 700 participating members from the process industry supply chain based in NE England. Amongst many achievements that have resulted in Stan becoming “European Cluster Manger of the Year 2014” is that NEPIC is credited with bringing over £3 billion of GVA to its regional economy through facilitating business growth and investment.

NEPIC, which is accredited the Gold Label  of the European Cluster Excellence Initiative (ECEI), supports the growth and development of companies facilitating business growth, innovation, trade and investment opportunities in Chemicals, Polymers, Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology, Renewable Energy and Materials.

International Cluster collaboration is a strategic activity for NEPIC focused on facilitating growth through innovation, trade and investment. NEPIC participates in collaborative EU programmes such as H2020, regional development programmes such as ERDF & ESIF and UK business support activities. The Cluster has been both a partner and leader in such projects all aimed at encouraging international collaborations and partnerships to improve business intelligence of its members.

NEPIC recently led the successful LOCIMAP (www.locimap.com) FP7 project benchmarking and building tools to measure the performance of industrial parks which had 16 EU collaborators. NEPIC also participates in the A.Spire consortium and its related projects. Local projects that the cluster created have been very successful, such as the NEPIC BASME Project, which helped 420 supply chain SMEs add €50 million of new business and add 900 jobs in 3 years through Cluster mentoring.

Dr Stan Higgins

NEPIC CEO & European Cluster Manager of the Year 2014 - 16

Catalyst UK Member

Working with UK Trade & Investment to promote UK excellence internationally