Michelin head of environment awarded OBE

Paul Kinkead, Head of Environment and Protection at Michelin’s truck tyre plant in Ballymena, has been awarded an OBE in The New Year’s Honours List for services to environmental protection in Northern Ireland.

A past pupil of Royal School Dungannon and a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, Paul Kinkead is a Chartered Chemical Engineer and has worked at Michelin’s Ballymena site since 1986. In 2011, he was appointed to the senior management team with specific responsibility for managing the Environment and Protection Department for the site. He is also the Michelin UK Country Manager for Industrial Hygiene and Chemical Safety.

The honour was awarded to him in recognition of his achievements in the environmental field, both within Michelin and on a national level. As well as his work within the company, Kinkead was also an active board member for the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) for three years, and has delivered his Recycling Methodology to more than 200 companies in Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland. 

Kinkead is also an industrial member of the CBI for Environmental matters, annually hosting and facilitating several seminars on Sustainability, Environmental Regulation and Zero Waste to Landfill at the Michelin site in Ballymena.

In September 2010, he was appointed to the Northern Ireland Waste Programme Board whose mission is to raise the NI recycling performance to at least 50 per cent. He chairs the Commercial & Industrial Waste Task Group on this Board, on behalf of the Environment Minister. 

On receiving the OBE, Paul Kinkead commented: “It is a prestigious honour to be personally recognised for my on-going environmental work. Working at Michelin for the past 25 years has enabled me to expand my career from engineering into environmental management and I am lucky to have had so many opportunities to work in a field which I am truly passionate about.”