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Motor dealer Peter Colby is the founder of Peter Colby Commercials, which he launched to sell heavy commercial vehicles in 1973.
Today the Norwich-based group has a variety of business interests in East Anglia, employing about 400 staff, with a turnover of £60m. The original business has now become Norfolk Trucks, an Iveco Ford franchise which supplies, maintains and repairs HGVs.
Mr Colby is chairman, and remains involved in the day-to-day running of the business, which has depots in Norwich, Beccles, Ipswich and Enfield. Another group company is Collease Trailer Rental, with a fleet of 600 vehicles and 1,000 trailers.
In 1992 the group bought the Eastern Hardware Company, a Lowestoft-based sheet metal works firm. A portfolio of property was also acquired, and rented to business, government departments and training organisations via Norfolk and Suffolk Estates.
In March 2002, the group further expanded its Lowestoft operations with the creation of engineering business Polgain, following the purchase of the assets of Zephyr Cams.
Veteran entrepreneur and farmer Paul Rackham has been involved in the property and waste management sectors since 1960.
His business interests include his role as chairman of Property Recycling Group, which acquires brownfield sites, decontaminates them, rents out units, and eventually sells the sites on.
The business, based at Bridgham, near Thetford, floated on the alternative investment market (Aim) in 2005. It currently has five sites in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. The erratic nature of the business saw pre-tax profits fluctuate from £2.42m in 2005 to £240,000 last year, but rental income is predicted to reach £800,000 this year. Mr Rackham rose to prominence as the founder of Waste Recycling Group (WRG), which he started in 1983 and floated with market capitalisation of £8m in 1994. As managing director, and then chairman, he grew the business organically and through acquisition to become the largest independent listed waste management company in the UK.
Father-and-son team Pat and Jo Pearson (right) run Thetford-based recycling business, Pearsons.
The family-owned firm employs more than 100 people, and has turnover of more than £8m. Its 48 waste collection vehicles serve 4,500 skips, containers, can banks, plastic banks and wheeled bins. Pearsons uses the latest technology to recycle more than 80pc of the waste it handles
The business was formed in 1945 by Cyril Pearson, assisted by his father, Charlie. Cyril had worked for a local wine and spirits merchant, and the business was born when he returned from his deliveries to the American officers’ club at RAF Lakenheath with cartloads of scrap which he sold from his father’s allotment. Cyril’s son, Pat, became involved in 1966, and at 66 is now chairman. Pat’s son, Jo, 42, joined full-time in 1979, and is managing director. Pearsons made four acquisitions during 2005, buying Stoke Ferry-based skip hire business Whiteaway Waste Management; Attleborough-based Woodys; Aves of Hinderclay, near Eye; and Arnall Capps Bins, of Thurton, near Loddon.
Last year it landed a contract to recycle waste carried back 10,000 miles from British Antarctic Survey stations.
Oil and gas veteran Mark Boyd is founder and chairman of Norwich-based offshore engineering company Aquaterra Energy, which has grown rapidly since its launch late in 2005.
Projects have included the design, manufacture and supply of two platforms for an oilfield in Angola. Aquaterra achieved sales of more than £6m in its first 12 months, and has provided services to 18 operators in a dozen countries.
The company employs 25 staff at its new headquarters near Norwich International airport. Mr Boyd has an impressive track record. After working for Amoco in the early 1980s he founded personnel supply business Team Drill in 1987, and engineering company UWG in 1989. Both are now part of city-based engineering group Acteon. Aquaterra has delivered further benefits to the local economy, for although 90 pc of its revenue has been generated overseas, the firm has spent more than £3m with Yarmouth-based suppliers, boosting the local engineering and fabrication industries. Aquaterra’s core business activities include drilling templates, tieback engineering, conductor centralisers and riser analysis.
Larking Gowen managing partner Bob Rose is expanding the Norfolk-based accountancy firm into a major regional player.
The practice has been established for more than 100 years, and is already one of the UK’s top 50 accountancy firms.
In 2005, Larking Gowen acquired Colchester-based chartered accountants Martin Wright & Co, and Unita, an accountancy and specialist corporate tax company based in Claydon, near Ipswich. Then, last year, the acquisition of Ipswich-based Manning & Girling took its total number of offices across Norfolk, Suffolk and Colchester to 10, with 21 partners, nearly 300 staff, and 700 clients.
Mr Rose was born in Hamburg, but went to school in Norwich and joined Larking Gowen as a teenager in 1969. He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1975, became a Larking Gowen partner in 1983, and the firm’s first-ever managing partner in 1997. His outside interests include the Norwich Preservation Trust and the Norwich Society. He has been a Campaign for Real Ale member for more than 30 years, and also enjoys running and golf.
Clarke Willis is the chief executive of agricultural purchasing group Anglia Farmers.
The group based at Keswick Hall, near Norwich, was formed from the merger of Loddon and Mid-Norfolk Farmers in 2003 and purchases on behalf of its 1,000 farmer members and 500 associate members. These are spread across Norfolk, north Suffolk and the Cambridgeshire fens.
The business has seen turnover grow rapidly, from £40m in 2003 to about £85m last year. Growth has continued this year with turnover up 46pc in the first quarter on a year ago. Anglia Farmers is now responsible for the purchase of about 8pc of the UK’s agricultural chemicals and 6pc of UK fertiliser. Mr Willis, aged 55, who lives at Yaxham, began his career as a graduate trainee with British Sugar. He then set up the Dengie farmers Co-operative in Essex, taking turnover from £3m to £18m. He moved to Dalgety, becoming national sales manager responsible for 350 staff, before running the company’s Spillers speciality feeds business.
Mr Willis is chairman of the BBC audience council for the East of England and a member of the audience council of England, and is also a member of the East of England Development Agency’s food and farming industry panel. Mr Willis and his wife Karen keep rare breed sheep on a smallholding.
James Hopkins is the chairman and driving force behind homebuilder Hopkins Homes, which has grown rapidly since its launch in 1992, and is now reaching beyond Norfolk and Suffolk into Essex and Cambridgeshire.
The company employs 140 staff, 50 of them at its headquarters near Woodbridge, and has a turnover of more than £50m. Current projects include the redevelopment of the former St Michael’s Hospital, in Aylsham. Hopkins Homes can trace its origins to 1984 when Mr Hopkins, then 24, founded Hopkins and Moore, with business partner David Moore. Their first job was to restore a cottage near Halesworth which they bought for £14,000 and sold for £21,000 – Mr Hopkins undertaking the labouring work, and Mr Moore the carpentry.
In 1991 Mr Hopkins bought Mr Moore’s share of the business, and in 1992 he established Hopkins Homes in partnership with local entrepreneur Trevor Harris. Hopkins and Moore still runs alongside the mainstream business.
Norfolk entrepreneur Paul Rogers founded and built the successful Premier Homes business, selling it to the Gladedale Group in May, 2006 in a deal thought to have been worth just under £50m.
Mr Rogers, 39, is now managing director of Gladedale (Anglia), which covers Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Epsom-based Gladedale is owned by septuagenarian Italian businessman Remo Dipre, and has turnover of around £500m.
After leaving school Mr Rogers worked with the family building business, Rogers Brothers, from 1986-1995. He then concentrated for two years on building a buy-to-let property portfolio before establishing Premier Homes in 1997. Its first site was at Horsford, where 36 homes were built, one plot at a time, and greatly assisted by a deal under which Premier did not have to pay for each plot until the house had been sold.
In 2004 Mr Rogers was joined by a new investor, Andre Serruys, until the business was sold last year. Gladedale builds 5,000 homes a year, and is the country’s largest independent house builder, and one of the top 10 overall. It has 1,200 plots in Norfolk alone, and will be developing the Ditchingham Maltings site, near Bungay.
Richard Ellis is chairman of the East of England Development Agency (Eeda), the regional development agency responsible for driving sustainable economic growth and regeneration in the six counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
He was originally appointed in December 2003, and has since been reappointed for a further three years through to 2009.
A chartered management accountant, Mr Ellis is a former chief executive of Norwich-based Kettle Foods, which he left in 2000. He is also managing director of Norfolk Country Cottages, which he launched with his wife, Lesley, from their cottage in Reepham in 1992.
This is now the region’s largest self-catering holiday cottage agency, handling about 350 properties. Mr Ellis is the lead chair for the nine English regional development agencies (RDAs) on rural and sustainable development issues. This involves representing the RDAs and rural partners in work with Defra.
Chris Murphy is founding partner of Norwich-based Foxmurphy, one of the largest advertising and marketing communications agencies outside London. Clients include Barclays, Adnams, and RAC.
Foxmurphy employs 80 staff, and turnover was £10.3m last year. This compares with 30 employees and turnover of £3m when the business was formed from a merger between CMA and Adforce in 1997.
Mr Murphy was born in Liverpool in 1958, and moved to Norwich with his family in the late 1960s. He worked for several years for APFP Advertising, which was part-owned by Keith Fox. After a brief spell selling newspaper space he rejoined APFP – now renamed Adforce. He next joined regional agency Bartlett, Jones, Pollin (BJP) in Norwich.
In 1990, Mr Murphy led a management buy-out from BJP, and ran the business as CMA for seven years. In 1997, CMA and Adforce merged to create Foxmurphy, and Mr Murphy became sole principal when Mr Fox retired in 2002.