ONE of Northern Ireland's leading industrialists and entrepreneurs is among a number of local business people recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Cookstown man John Cunningham (73), who heads up the Lisburn-based Camlin Group, has been awarded a CBE for his service to the business community.
Under his guidance Camlin, which supplies and develops technology for the global power industry, has grown sales year on year since its formation, and last year had a turnover of more than £25 million. It has 340 staff.
Over the last half century John - whose sons Peter and Michael are now also directors of Camlin - has created and built a number of significant businesses.
Speaking to the Irish News he said he was "surprised, delighted and totally taken aback" at receiving his letter from Buckingham Palace, but insisted that the award "reflects the extraordinary efforts of the whole workforce".
A confessed workaholic, he claimed he will "probably never retire", but said he would "at least look forward to a day off" to travel with his family to London for the awards ceremony later this year.
In 2012 John's business was chosen by the Stormont Executive and then Secretary of State Owen Paterson to launch the public consultation document on plans to reduce corporation tax in Northern Ireland.
Yet he has often been critical of the devolved administration, once describing the bickering between the DUP and Sinn Fein as "totally nonsensical - like watching children arguing at school."
He has also branded the north's divided education system as "completely inadequate",and once said of the Executive that: "If they were a business, they'd be bankrupt."
Meanwhile an MBE has gone to John Donnelly, who until recently was the owner of Retlan Manufacturing Ltd, the umbrella group holding SDC Trailers and MDF Engineering in Toomebridge.
The sale of the group last year to CIMC Vehicles in China was the culmination of his life’s work in engineering, but he is also the founding chairman of Workspace Draperstown Enterprise Agency Ltd.
Donnelly was also an unstinting supporter of local community organisations and charities including Charis Cancer Care and Sorcha Huntington’s Disease Association NI.
Also awarded an MBE in the Queen's list was 83-year-old German-born Ralph Bauer, chairman of the Frankin Group in Banbridge, for services to textiles manufacturing. The group has been operating in Co Down since 1854, and Bauer has been with the company for more than four decades.
And an MBE has also gone to skin stylist to the stars Alyson Hogg, the award-winning founder and owner of Vita Liberata tanning technology, who shared her phenomenal success story last year when she was guest speaker at the Irish News Workplace & Employment Awards.
An OBE has gone to Norman Lynas, chairman of the third generation Lynas Foodservice in Coleraine, which supplies chilled and frozen foods to food outlets, businesses and public bodies.
Its last set of filed accounts showed its turnover grew from £105.5m to £108.1m and the company - which employs 375 people - made a gross profit of more than £18m.
