LONDON — The sun never sets on Dyson, a private company that is still family-owned, with its self-made founder Sir James Dyson, 77, holding the title of chief engineer.
The global enterprise, which Dyson founded in 1993, has engineering, research, development, manufacturing and testing operations in Singapore, the U.K., Malaysia, Mexico, China and the Philippines.
Its global headquarters is in Singapore, while its 700-acre technology campus is located in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England. Global revenue in 2023 was a record 7.1 billion pounds.
Since 1993, Dyson has invested 1.7 billion pounds in the Wiltshire offices and laboratories that house the early-stage research, design and development of future Dyson technology.
The company employs 14,000 people globally including a 6,500-strong engineering team. It sells products in 85 markets in more than 425 Dyson direct retail stores around the world, including a Dyson Virtual Reality Demo Store, too.
Dyson is investing 2.75 billion pounds to conceive “revolutionary products and technologies,” and its global teams of engineers, scientists and software developers are focusing on energy storage, high-speed electric digital motors, sensing and vision systems, robotics, machine learning technologies and AI.
In 2022, Dyson announced its 500-million-pound commitment across its beauty portfolio, which will facilitate the research and development of 20 new beauty products over the next four years.
Testament to James Dyson’s love of learning, there is also a Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, which is meant to combine the academic rigor of a traditional university with hands-on experience at the company’s Wiltshire campus.
The model is innovative: Dyson’s 156 undergraduate engineers earn a salary from Day One and pay no tuition. Some 31 percent of the undergraduate engineers identify as female, compared to a national average of 18 percent for engineering undergraduate courses in the U.K.
There is also a James Dyson Foundation, founded in 2002, which aims to empower aspiring engineers, support engineering education and invest in medical research. It has donated more than 145 million pounds to charitable causes to date.
The James Dyson Award is the foundation’s annual design competition and is open to current and recent design and engineering students. Since 2005, the award has supported more than 400 inventions worldwide, and provided funds to support their commercialization.
Education has always been a top priority. Dyson served as provost of his alma mater, Royal College of Art, from 2011 until 2017, succeeding Sir Terence Conran, and has been a great promoter of science and arts education.
While other countries, such as China, urge students to study STEM subjects, Dyson is a great promoter of STEAM, where the “a” stands for art. He built a STEAM building at his old school, Gresham’s in Norfolk, where both of his parents taught, and where his father was head of the Classics department.
The money for the building was the largest donation the school had ever received, and a poignant thank-you from Dyson and his family. When James was 9 years old his father died, and the school headmaster waived the tuition so that he could continue his education there.
“There’s chemistry, mathematics, art, design and technology all in the same building,” said Dyson. “And the lovely thing is they’re cross-fertilizing, exchanging ideas. Science can be just as creative as art or design.”
His achievements have been recognized throughout his career. Dyson was given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth in 2007, and became a fellow of the Royal Society [Britain’s national academy of sciences] in 2015. A year later, he was appointed to the royal Order of Merit, an elite group of high achievers in the arts, science, learning and services to Britain.
The entrepreneur is passionate about agriculture, too, and founded Dyson Farming in 2012.
“I really believe that we [as a country] should be self-sufficient in food, and farming is the way to do that,” said Dyson. “But life as a farmer, and a [food] manufacturer, is not very easy, and the farm has been a challenge.
Dyson farming strawberry rows
Courtesy of Dyson
“I’m not sure I’ve quite got there but we do make a profit with our farming, and with no subsidies at all. We’re finding ways to make it profitable, and we’re also finding ways to grow things we need for the business,” he said.
It is one of the largest farming businesses in the U.K., extending to 36,000 acres across Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset, England. The focus is on long-term investment in British farming and the countryside.
Dyson believes there is real opportunity for agriculture to drive a revolution in technology, and vice versa. Dyson Farming is developing new approaches to efficient, high-technology agriculture and food production.
Dyson Farming grows a range of produce including wheat and barley, potatoes, onions and peas, of which it is the largest single producer in the U.K. It also produces beef and lamb, and grows British strawberries out of season in its state-of-the-art glasshouse, which is heated by an adjacent anaerobic digester.
