Pharmaceuticals
2017: No.46 - £90m
2016: No.=44 - £85m
If Cornishman Dudley Taylor hadn’t endured the privations of a pharmaceutical apprenticeship in Truro in the 1930s, then the successful chain of Dudley Taylor Pharmacies may never have been born.
In tiny lodgings, working by the light of an oil lamp, hungry most of the time with tripe and onions the gastronomical highlight of the week, working up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, things were not easy for the young Dudley Taylor.
But he stuck at it and now, more than 70 years later, Warwick-based Dudley Taylor Pharmacies is a multi-million pound family company with 60 branches stretching from Cornwall to South Yorkshire.
The business - committed to community healthcare and now known as The Pharmacy Group - is now run by Dudley Taylor’s sons Christopher and Michael.
It's a profitable business, reporting profits of £6.7 million on a £63.4 million turnover in 2015.
After the war, in which he served with the RAF, Dudley Taylor worked for Boots and for private pharmacies before opening his first shop in Brentford using £1000 borrowed from his father.
Another pharmacy, this time in Kenilworth, followed soon after.
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He established a number of partnerships, largely in the Midlands and Wales, and the chain grew as a thriving retail and wholesale chemist’s chain with branches around the country.
In 2000 the operation sold off around 80 shops to Moss Pharmacy, now Alliance Boots, for £68 million leaving the company to concentrate on around 25 core Midlands and Welsh outlets.
Further expansion has doubled this number. A second pharmacy firm, Dowelhurst Holdings, was sold in 2005 for £40 million.
Now, under the direction of , aged 63, and Michael, 59, who come from a family of seven children, the Dudley Taylor Pharmacies chain continues to flourish and is worth close to £30 million.
While the business is run from its Wedgnock Lane headquarters, the company ethos is to give its branches a high degree of autonomy, allowing each to develop its own character and its focus on the local community.