Anniversary year has been a challenge for JCB, but ‘we are making a pretty good fist of it’ says proud chairman
JCB chairman LORD BAMFORD tells Richard Castle how the company is digging itself out of some difficult times in what should be a celebratory 2020 for the company
JCB chairman Lord Bamford has reflected on one of his toughest spells in business - and outlined exciting plans for the future - as the firm celebrates its 75th anniversary.
The digger giant axed almost 1,000 employees earlier this year as the Covid-19 pandemic brought the global construction industry to a halt.
But the boss of the Rocesterbased manufacturer says it is already bouncing back from the crisis.
JCB was founded on Friday, October 23, 1945, by the late Joseph Cyril Bamford - nicknamed “Mr JCB” - on the same day his son, Anthony – now Lord Bamford – was born.
In the last 75 years it has grown from operating from a tiny lock-up garage in Uttoxeter to a worldwide business with 22 manufacturing plants.
They include the World HQ in Rocester, as well as factories in Uttoxeter and Foston.
Lord Bamford said: “The changes [I have seen over the years] are extraordinary. I worked in our business before I ended up running it.
“It was really quite a small business; it was quite regional.
“From an early age we exported. We exported to France – that was our first customer – and then to Spain, then to Holland and Germany.
“The reason was they were the closest markets that we could get to; and also the cheapest.
“It was a tiny business. It’s now a worldwide business and employs as many people overseas as in the UK.
“When I took over in 1975, we had one plant in Rocester.”
Down the years, JCB has been at the forefront of some of the industry’s biggest innovations – including the invention of the backhoe loader, the JCB fastrac tractor, the JCB hydradig and the industry’s first ever electric mini excavator.
Other major milestones include achieving the land speed record in a JCB Dieselmax streamliner, which reached 350.092mph in 2006, and, more recently, breaking the Guinness World Record for the fastest tractor when a JCB Fastrac One reached a speed of 103.6mph.
But those achievements have not come without significant challenges.
“Challenges, when you’ve got them, take much of your thinking, but once you’ve achieved that challenge it kind of goes away and you’re onto the next thing,” said Lord Bamford.
“One of the challenges was making diesel engines. We didn’t make diesel engines - we bought them from other people.
“We launched our own diesel engines in 2004 and we’ve made, since, three quarters of a million - almost 100,000 a year for 20 years – and now we supply engines to other people.
“That was a challenge and it was an achievement to do it.
“Now we make engines here and in our plant in India as well.
“We have a family of engines and they are very good. We don’t get many complaints.”
But one of the biggest challenges the company has faced in recent years has been this year.
Operations at JCB’S 11 UK factories came to a halt in March when the Government imposed a nationwide lockdown as part of efforts to tackle the coronavirus crisis.
When work resumed in the summer, it was clear the company would not reach its target of selling and producing 100,000 machines in 2020.
Lord Bamford said some “difficult decisions” were needed to safeguard the business.
He said: “This year has been a challenge for anybody in business.
“We had an enormous order book in March - this year was going to be a record year for us.
“At the beginning of March we had an order book of £1.5 billion dollars of orders on hand.
“By the end of March it had disappeared and that’s because people buy our sort of machinery to do a job.
“It’s an investment and they need it to do a job virtually immediately. They don’t buy them to use in a year’s time; they buy them for that job.
“If they don’t get the job, or if a house-building site or construction site is closed, they don’t buy the machine.
“It’s a pretty brutal world and that’s what happened.
“Not producing machines means you’re not needing components and you can’t employ people doing nothing.
“The Government furlough scheme was a very good scheme and we did take advantage of that to begin with.
“We’ve had to reduce the number of people, but we’ve been taking back people and at the moment we’re on the point of recruiting more people.
“However, like most businesses, we respond to the marketplace.
“It does fluctuate. I’d love it not to, but it just happens to be a fact of life.
“It’s more political than it is seasonal. If Government’s aren’t investing in roads or hospitals or people aren’t buying houses, that of course means there’s less construction.
“JCB still belongs to the same family and even with Covid we’re trying to keep going and, I’d say, making a pretty good fist of it.”
As the company enters its 76th year in business, JCB is turning its attention to the “next big thing” - and it is safe to say that innovation will be at the heart of it.
Lord Bamford said: “We must be influenced by what has been happening in the world, particularly with global warming and the effect on individuals and nations.
“One of the areas for concern is something close to us as a business and to anybody making products, which are, in the broadest sense, automotive.
“It is the fact that they consume fossil fuels, which to us are petrol and diesel.
“Those fuels produce all sorts of emissions and we have to be concerned about them.
“We have to, as a company and as a country, be very concerned, so looking ahead we have to get our minds around what we do, sensibly, to reduce our footprint as a company and an industry.
“In the last few months, we’ve become the first people in the world to be in production with electric mini-excavators.
“We’re now making these machines daily in Cheadle.
“They have batteries and are charged overnight.
“They’re virtually completely silent, have no emissions whatsoever and obviously don’t use diesel.
“We also have a whole family of other, smaller pieces of construction machinery coming along.
“In September, we launched an electric dumpster and there are more products coming along like that. This is real innovation.”
“It’s opened up more places where our customers can work the machinery, like in the middle of cities, too, where noise and emissions come into it.
“Going on from that, we just showed a 20-tonne hydrogenpowered dig excavator, which is powered by green hydrogen.”