Mr. Nihal Cooray is a BSc qualified engineer and a chartered mechanical engineer with over 36 years’ experience in industry. He is also a certified Cleaner Production assessor. Currently He is a member of the board of trustees of the Asia Pacific Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (APRSCP). And the mechanical Engineering Sectoral committee of the Sri Lanka Standards Institute.

After working in several industries in areas related to Cement, Hardware, and Plastics he he worked for the Small and Medium Enterprise Developers (SMED) project for 16 years from 1991 providing services to SMEs in every province of Sri Lanka. Since 2001 services related to Environmental management & Cleaner Production was started which was instrumental in hosting the National Cleaner production Center under UNIDO. Through Cleaner Production and related services ,assisted many industries to implement proactive environmental management (Cleaner Production) which paved way for organizations to be more resource efficient while being environmental friendly.

During the period at SMED, worked very closely with the National Cleaner Production Center (NCPC), as the host organization initially and later as an external consultant.