Paul Topping has been in the duty free business for over 25 years. During this time he has held a number of senior roles, including Managing Director at Alpha Retail International, Managing Director Alpha Asia, President Asia for Aldeasa and Director South East Asia for Gebr Heinemann.

He played a very important role in the public listing of Alpha Airports Group on the UK stock market and was responsible for creating Alpha International’s retail business in the USA, Europe and Asia. This included the first PPP (public private partnership) airport in India, at Cochin, and Orlando Sanford Airport in the USA.

Alpha was the first international retailer to operate in India and Paul was instrumental in creating awareness of the country’s potential by running two successful conferences. He was one of the two founders of the Travel Retail Tsunami charity, supported by the travel retail industry, which built a new village in Sri Lanka to house people made homeless by the December 2004 tsunami. Paul is currently running the “Educate to Protect” campaign to help children to overcome barriers of race, religion and economic hardship.

Paul is an independent main board director of Flemingo International; he is also the part-owner & director of Bangalore Soma Winery and CEO of Tractopping, a travel retail consultancy. He is known as The Wine Man in Sri Lanka, given his involvement in the wine industry in the country over the last ten years. Paul also writes under his pen name, the Whinging Pom.