Manufacturing
2015: No.2 - £2bn
2014: No.2 - £2bn

The worldwide growth of Lord Paul’s Black Country-based steel and engineering empire, the Caparo Group, continues with major investments in the UK and Poland.

The firm is spending £3.2 million to upgrade its facilities and equipment at its UK regional facilities centred on Oldbury and also its operations in Poland

Operating from more than 80 locations across the world – 20 of them in the Black Country – the company has posted profits in excess of £62 million in 2013. The company’s growing Indian businesses alone are now worth well over £1.5 million.

Always at the cutting edge, Caparo has launched a web site aimed at attracting new technological inventions. Aimed at university faculties, companies and independent inventors the site – www.caparoinnovations.com – provides opportunities for inventors to put forward their ideas as well as help the company with its technology challenges.

In 2012 the group played a part in the hunt for the “god particle”. The Accles and Pollock division of Caparo supplied components and engineering expertise to CERN for the Large Hadron Collider which finally identified the Higgs boson particle.

The Caparo Group is reaping the benefits of trading with the world’s most successful economies. Its success in India in particular has repaired its post-recession balance sheet. The company saw spectacular growth until 2007 as a result of its strategy of building up a major presence on the sub-continent. The company’s stated aim was to be the biggest automotive company in Lord Paul’s native country.

But Caparo was hit hard by the recession and had a poor 2008 and 2009, reporting losses, racking up debt and causing its lenders some concerns. Now it has been restructured, with its US and Indian businesses operating on a stand-alone basis. Revenues from all of the companies have seen impressive growth.

Lord Paul, aged 83, is chairman of the company while his son Angad Paul is chief executive.

The company has three entities on the sub-continent: Caparo Maruti, Caparo Engineering India and Caparo India Private. Caparo’s first venture in India was back in 1994 when the company set up a joint venture with Maruti, then India’s largest car company.

Lord Paul set up the Caparo School of Excellence in Manufacturing and Materials Technology in Jalandhar – the town where Lord Paul’s father first set up a business making steel buckets back in 1910.

In the UK the Caparo Innovation Centre, established with the University of Wolverhampton, received the 2013 award for the Business Collaboration of the Year. The company also funds apprenticeships at the RSA Academy in Tipton.

The Caparo Group was founded in 1968, two years after Lord Paul came to the UK to get treatment for his daughter Ambika’s leukaemia. She died soon after and the Ambika Paul Foundation was set up in her memory to promote the wellbeing of children. It has donated millions to children’s charities.

Steel, automotive, engineering and property group Caparo has its major regional office in Oldbury and a technology division on Wolverhampton Science Park. It has other Midland facilities in West Bromwich, Stourbridge and Warwick. Worldwide it has sites in Europe, Asia and North America.

In addition one of Lord Paul’s sons, Ambar, heads the family’s Caparo Hotels chain which has hotels in Oxford, Abingdon, Torquay and London.

Lord Paul is chancellor of two universities – Wolverhampton and Westminster – and he is committed to improving standards of education in his native India.

Lord Paul is a strict vegetarian who lives by simple Hindu principles and encourages his employees to show integrity and respect.