JCB Celebrates 80 Years with £100m Investment

JCB is set to invest £100 million in ultra-modern manufacturing facilities at its global headquarters.  

The firm said the investment at its HQ in Rocester – which coincides with its 80th birthday – will safeguard the jobs of its 8,000 UK employees and strengthen its operations across Wales and the Midlands.

JCB's Wrexham plant employs more than 500 people, playing a key role in supporting production and innovation across the company’s 22 factories worldwide.

The investment at JCB’s Rocester site in Staffordshire will begin immediately, funding a £60 million fully automated powder paint plant and a comprehensive modernisation of its shop floor, with new machining centres, friction welders and cylinder boring machines.

JCB Chairman Anthony Bamford said investing in the World HQ, JCB’s home since 1950, was an important and logical step for the company:

“Basing JCB in the UK makes business sense, just as it has always made business sense. The work ethic in our country remains strong – especially in the Midlands, with its deep engineering heritage.

 

“It makes perfect sense to invest heavily in our British factories and the £100 million we are investing now will put us at the forefront of our industry. Obviously, we are expanding overseas, not least in America, where we have been for decades. But the UK is our home.

 

“We directly employ more than 19,000 people around the world, more than 8,000 of whom are in the UK. And even though around three quarters of our UK production is exported, we continue to make a huge contribution to this country and to the national economy.”

Independent analysis by Oxford Economics shows that JCB contributes £2.8 billion to UK GDP, £739 million in tax revenues, and supports over 41,000 jobs across the UK economy.

In 2010, Lord Bamford established the JCB Academy in Rocester – a school for the engineers and business leaders of the future, more than 3,500 students have so far studied at the JCB Academy – with every single student either entering employment or further or higher education.

A blue heritage plaque is being unveiled at the spot in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, where the late Joseph Cyril Bamford CBE founded JCB in 1945 in a 12ft by 15ft lock-up garage.

To celebrate its 80th anniversary and Lord Bamford’s birthday, JCB will give its global workforce – comprising over 19,000 people – an additional day’s holiday on 24th October.