This paper proposes a scheme for the hybridisation of an evolution strategy framework and periodically scheduled Nelder-Mead algorithm. This relatively simple hybridisation scheme turns out to be efficient for the optimisation problems in higher dimensions. The efficiency of the proposed method is tested for a complex engineering problem, namely an inverse problem of chemical kinetics. An extensive parameter analysis and tuning are presented. Numerical results show the superiority of the proposed methods in comparison with some popular metaheuristics and some tailored algorithms presented in the literature for solving the problem under investigation.