Tributes paid to industrialist Turner
TRIBUTES have been paid to Yorkshire industrialist Neil Turner OBE who has died aged 69.
Mr Turner, who was appointed Sheffield’s Master Cutler in 2003 for 12 months and is a former president of Sheffield Chamber, passed away last Wednesday.
He was born in 1941 and educated at Rugby and the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester and Wye, part of London University based in Kent.
Mr Turner remained active in the Cutlers’ Company until his death and had wide experience of both farming and manufacturing industry.
He began his working life in farming, but later went into manufacturing becoming a self-employed businessman in 1971 when he set up his own company, Edward Turner and Son Ltd, making concrete slabs.
Three years later he bought Durham Duplex, manufacturers of precision industrial blades, hand knives and machine knives, of which he was chairman and his son Charles is now managing director.
Over the years Mr Turner, who went by his second name Neil, was also a director of a number of industrial, financial and venture capital companies.
He also held a number of regional appointments, including presidency of both the Yorkshire & Humberside and the Sheffield Chambers of Commerce and deputy chairmanship of the Y&H Development Agency.
He spent five years as a member of the Y&H Regional Economic Planning Council for Yorkshire and Humberside.
Mr Turner qualified as a chartered land agent and a chartered surveyor and managed the Hatfield Park Estate farms in the 1960s.
In 1983 he became chairman, a position he held for eight years, of the South and West Yorkshire Area Committees of the Rural Development Commission. He was a Member of the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society and a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Farmers.
A General Commissioner of Taxes in Sheffield, Mr Turner was High Sheriff of South Yorkshire in 1983/4 and appointed a Deputy Lord Lieutenant for South Yorkshire in 2001.
He received an OBE for services to business in Yorkshire and Humberside in 2002 and from 1998 to 2003 he was the Honorary Colonel of the 212 (Yorkshire) Field Hospital.
He was married for 47 years and is survived by his wife, Gillian, two children and five grandchildren.
Richard Wright, executive director of Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, said: “Neil was a past president of the Sheffield Chamber and a past Master Cutler, but he served the city of Sheffield and the whole of South Yorkshire in so many other ways.”
