Vacuum cleaner and air filter maker Dyson is cutting around 1,000 UK jobs as part of a global restructuring, reducing its British workforce by more than a quarter.
Staff were informed of the cuts on Tuesday morning as part of moves to reduce the company’s 15,000-strong workforce worldwide amid a broader cost-cutting drive.
Dyson, known for its bagless vacuum cleaners, hand dryers and bladeless fans, has 3,500 employees in the UK and offices in Wiltshire, Bristol and London. The review leading to the decision began some time before the general election was announced in May.
The job cuts come on a day when new Trade and Enterprise Secretary John Reynolds hosted a call with 170 business and trade association leaders to set out his priorities and answer questions.
Dyson CEO Hanno Kirner said: “Dyson operates in increasingly competitive and aggressive global markets, where the pace of innovation and change is only accelerating. We know we must always be entrepreneurial and agile.
“We have grown rapidly and, like all companies, we review our global structures from time to time to ensure we are prepared for the future,” he added, saying cutting jobs “has always been incredibly painful.” He promised the company would support those affected by the layoffs.
Dyson was founded by inventor Sir James Dyson in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in 1991. While it manufactures most of its products overseas, it conducts the majority of its research, development and product design in the UK, and the country will remain an important R&D centre for the company.
Malmesbury will continue to be home to the Dyson Institute, where 160 university engineers work on Dyson projects three days a week and study two.
In Asia, Dyson’s biggest market, the company is competing with local rivals that often launch similar products soon after the launch of their own appliances. When the company’s Brexit-friendly founder moved the group’s corporate headquarters to Singapore in 2019, he highlighted the growing importance of supply chains and customers in Asia.
Since its founding more than three decades ago, Dyson has grown from making vacuum cleaners to making hair dryers, fans and air filters. Two years ago it introduced its first wearable product, a pair of air-purifying Bluetooth headphones with a visor. It has also entered the robotics industry and hopes to launch machines capable of performing household tasks such as washing dishes by 2030.
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That year, the company paid a £1.2bn dividend to its founder’s Singapore-based holding company. The dividend was paid to the parent company, Weybourne Holdings, which also owns the billionaire’s family office, Weybourne Group, and UK investments in land and insurance. The dividend was increased from £1bn in 2021 and brought the total taken out by Dyson from his technology company to £4bn over the past five years.
Dyson is one of Britain’s richest businessmen, with his fortune estimated at £20.8bn in May, according to the Sunday Times.
In December, the billionaire lost a libel suit against the publisher of the Daily Mirror after a columnist for the paper suggested he had been a hypocrite because he had “championed the Brexit vote… before moving its global headquarters to Singapore”.