Barry Dodd
Entrepreneur with a deep commitment to public service
BARRY DODD, who has died in a helicopter accident aged 70, was a public-spirited industrial entrepreneur and a highly respected lord-lieutenant of North Yorkshire.
Dodd’s first company, GSM Graphic Arts, was founded in Thirsk in 1974. Augmenting organic growth with the acquisition and turnaround of underperforming competitors, he created a group with outposts in Germany, Poland and the US that is now Europe’s largest manufacturer of industrial graphic products, including nameplates, control panels and durable bar code labels. In the automotive sector, GSM supplies logo badges for many European car marques and other hi-tech components.
After 30 years dedicated to building his business, Dodd decided in 2004 to devote at least a day a week to public service. He served as chairman and Prochancellor of the University of Hull, chairman of the joint Hull York Medical School, and of the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, prior to its abolition after the 2010 general election.
From 2011 until earlier this year he led a successor organisation, the Local Enterprise Partnership for York, North Yorkshire and the East Riding, which attracted some £250 million of government funding. He was also a member of the Automotive Industry Council.
While these multiple roles gave Dodd a high profile in business and local government circles, there was still some surprise when he was appointed lord-lieutenant of North Yorkshire in 2014, succeeding Lord Crathorne.
It was the first time the post had been taken up by a business leader, but Dodd’s height and figure gave him an impressive bearing in uniform, while his approachability, integrity and genuine interest in all the projects he visited, particularly those concerned with economic development and training, won many admirers.
He also brought the skills of a good chairman, delegating many assignments to his deputies to ensure wider connections between the lieutenancy and community life.
Barry John Dodd was born in Salford on Oct 2 1947; as a child his mother took him first to Canada and then to Chicago, where she became a court reporter. He returned to England to finish school and study engineering and computing at Hatfield Polytechnic before joining the chemicals giant ICI, working on Teesside and in London and New York.
In his mid-twenties he left ICI to join a smaller company as its technical director, a move he later described as “an absolute disaster”. He moved again to join forces with an older EX-ICI man, Geoff Collier: pooling their £8,000 of savings, they started a venture making metal nameplates on the first floor of a terraced house in Guisborough, but had to move on when their metal press shook the plaster off the landlord’s ceiling below.
Next they occupied an old army hut at Thirsk, on what became the site of the first GSM factory. It was after Collier’s retirement in 1988 that Dodd embarked on a more ambitious expansion as sole owner of the group. In later years he was also chairman and major shareholder in two software companies and a distributor of mobile computing products.
A perfectionist in engineering standards, Dodd was also a benevolent employer and a mentor to many young tech entrepreneurs. He was appointed OBE in 2006 and CBE in 2014.
Dodd’s acumen brought him a fortune estimated last year at £75 million, but his personal style was modest; he enjoyed restoring his own homes, and tinkering under the bonnets of his collection of old Bentleys. An experienced pilot, he was at the controls of his own Bell helicopter when it crashed near Boroughbridge on May 30.
He is survived by his wife Frances, née Mctigue, whom he married in 1978; they had no children.