Construction
2016: No.24 £162m
2015: No.37 £98m

Rupert Mucklow’s industrial property group is in excellent health. Rents, occupancy rates, land values, revenues and turnover are all on the up and the company has a stock market valuation of well over £300 million. All this makes Rupert Mucklow one of the biggest winners in the 2016 Rich List.

As chairman of Cradley Heath-based A&J Mucklow Group – one of the region’s leading industrial property companies - he has reported that occupancy rates were running at an increased 95 per cent while net borrowings as at October 2015 were £74.7 million against a property investment portfolio of £350 million.

All this is good news for A & J Mucklow – structured as a real estate investment trust - which has been having a busy time of late. Pre-tax profits for the year to June 2015 were £56.2 million a 38 per cent increase on 2014’s figure of £40.7 million. The trend has continued in the latter part of the year, with a 4.7 per cent vacancy rate – the lowest on record.

Mucklow completed 31 new lettings and 23 lease renewals during its last financial year. Two investment properties were acquired at a cost of £4.2 million – an industrial unit at Meridian Business Park, Leicester and an industrial unit at Nexus Point, Birmingham. In December 2014 Mucklow completed its 116,000 sq ft development for Worcester Bosch at Apex Park, Worcester.

Planning permission was obtained for a proposed 350,000 sq ft industrial development and access road at Mucklow Business Park in Tyseley and the firm has also entered into an option agreement with Wolverhampton City Council and Staffordshire County Council to develop a 15 acre site adjacent to the new Jaguar Land Rover engine plant.

Rupert Mucklow, aged 51, has been executive chairman of A&J Mucklow since 2004 when his father, Albert, stepped down.

Founded in 1933, the firm began life as a housebuilder but in the 1960s – having gone public in 1962 - moved away from homes and concentrated on investing in and developing industrial, commercial and retail property.

Over the intervening years Mucklow has ridden out the ups and downs of the property market. A long term strategy of maintaining a portfolio of properties with potential for long term rental and capital growth is balanced against a short term strategy which is more opportunistic, acquiring when values are low and disposing when investment values are more robust.

The company is still very much a family business with the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the company’s founders holding shares.