MEET YOUR 2024 / 2025 RENTER WARDENS - RICHARD COWARD
19 NOVEMBER 2024
Having been brought up in Scotland and then Colchester, Richard graduated from Loughborough University in 1982 with a degree in Chemical Engineering and Management Studies. He found his way into the printing and packaging industry via Chapman Envelopes and spent some 13 years in various roles in the UK and Belgium with Field Group Plc.
He went on to leave the carton industry moving to corrugated, and ran Rigid Group, part of the Belgian group VPK, in the UK and Ireland for some 12 years, during which time he also took up roles chairing the corrugated sector of the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI), representing the UK on the FEFCO board and later became president of the CPI. During this time Richard became a freeman of the livery and later in 2012 a liveryman. He retired at the end of 2019 and retained only one industry role as President of the European paper converting association, CITPA which he will relinquish this year.
Retirement has not been a total rest as Richard took on a Post Graduate Certificate in Art History and then completed a Masters. Degree in the same subject at Birkbeck College. After a short gap to consider ‘what next?’ he has just started a PhD at the prestigious Courtauld Institute where he is considering the ‘Rise and Demise of Art Nouveau through a Semiotic lens’. Richard has been married to Sharon for 44 years and they have three daughters and eight grandchildren just to fill any time left after being a Church Warden at St Nicolas Newbury, Chair of a tennis club and Chair of a charity for adults with learning disabilities. He hopes that with the CITPA role coming to an end he will have more time to devote to the livery and being a renter warden comes at an ideal time to become more engaged.