The soaraway success of giant digger manufacturer JCB has ensured that Sir Anthony Bamford is by far the biggest winner in this year’s Rich List.
The company has delivered a £355 million profit on £2.75 billion sales following unprecedented global demand for its distinctive yellow products. Turnover is at the highest level in the company’s 66 year history, with a 37 per cent increase.
The Rocester firm – which is selling 70,000 machines a year across the world – is now valued at £3 billion. Growth is coming largely from emerging markets, but more traditional markets are performing well also.
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In September JCB opened a new £60 million factory in Brazil, well-placed to take advantage of the surge in the construction sector in that country off the back of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. The new 350,000 sq ft plant in Sao Paulo will make excavators and backhoe loaders, mainly for the domestic market.
That market was buoyed by one of the biggest single tenders in JCB’s history for more than 1,000 machines for the Brazilian government, worth £60 million. The machines will be used to improve and open up thousands of miles of roads in communicates heavily dependent on farming, ensuring food gets to its customers much quicker.
The backhoe loader received royal recognition last year when the Queen’s Award for Enterprise was bestowed on the Backhoe Loader Business Unit at Rocester in the 2012 international trade category. It was the 27th Queen’s Award to be won by the JCB Group since 1969 – a record for a 海角视频 company.
As well as their huge 4,000 acre Wootton estate in Staffordshire, Sir Anthony, 66, and his wife Lady Carole Bamford have homes in Chelsea, Barbados and France and the 2,000 acre Daylesford estate near Stow-on-the Wold where Lady Bamford also runs the award-winning Daylesford Organics.
She founded the company 10 years ago and it is now one of the country’s largest working organic farms, with a long list of celebrity customers. The company, which has a vineyard in Provence, supplies food delivery firm Ocado, and has a store and café in Tokyo.
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She also has shops in Pimlico, Notting Hill, Selfridge’s and Gloucestershire, an organic farm school, a cookery school and a fashion business – Bamford & Sons.
The Bamfords’ road to fortune began in 1945 when Sir Anthony’s father, Joseph Cyril Bamford, built his first farm trailer in a small garage in Rocester. Now Sir Anthony – knighted in 1990 – moves in exalted circles and has the ear of the Prime Minister.