Manufacturing
2015: No.47= - £75m                             
2014: No.42 - £76m

David Ball’s industrial fan business – Elta Group – saw revenues drop by almost £14 million in 2014, thanks to fluctuating exchange rates.

David Ball, aged 47, is vice-chairman of Kingswinford-based Elta Group, which has been impacted by exchange rates of the Australian dollar and the South African rand, which led to turnover decreasing to £80.5 million from £94.1 million the previous year. Pre-tax profits were down from £1.6 million to £1.1 million.

But the company remains healthy and is pursuing new market and product opportunities for the future. In 2013 Elta was named as one of 1,000 entrepreneurial companies to “inspire Britain” by the London Stock Exchange.

The Ball family made their fortune from the sale of Dudley-based fan-maker Air Movement to aerospace giant Smiths Industries.

Air Movement was founded by David Ball’s father Ray in the early 1970s. The sale to Smiths in 1996 netted £47 million. The Balls retained part of the business – Elta Fans – and re-launched the company as the Elta Group.

Elta itself was originally formed in 1974, initially making cooling fans for high temperature operations. The company developed rapidly, designing, engineering and manufacturing heating, cooling and extraction fans for a wide range of industries including marine, construction and agricultural.

Elta now earns much of its revenue overseas and its fans – from 100 millimetres to two metres diameter – can be found in heat exchangers, engine rooms, oil rigs and dry cleaning equipment.

The company is based on the Pensnett Trading Estate in Kingswinford and also has a major facility in Fareham. It has assembly plants in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In all Elta operates in seven countries across four continents. Its UK subsidiaries include Dudley-based Air Design, Wiltshire-based Hydor which makes fans for the poultry industry and Duct Products in Belfast.

The company is worth at least £50 million and is a patron of the Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers.

The panel included MP Gisela Stuart, BBC producer and EHS Old Girl Liz Cave, MP Andrew Mitchell, Bishop of Birmingham David Urquhart and director of policy from Liberty, Isabella Sankey Ball is a former pupil of Haybridge High School in Hagley.