Engineering giant Dyson is planning to move its workforce out of Bristol and is scrapping plans for a tech and research hub in the city – despite investing £100m in a new building.
The company, best known for its bagless vacuum cleaners, will relocate 180 staff to its large campus in Wiltshire. It will mean all of Dyson’s South West employees are based in one location.
Dyson’s Malmesbury base is home to the Dyson Institute, where 185 undergraduate and postgraduate engineers study while working for the company.
The move comes despite a major investment by Dyson into a previously planned research and development hub in Bristol. The company, which currently rents office space on College Green, purchased and carried out a top-to-bottom refurbishment of 1 Georges Square in Finzels Reach last year.
The £100m Bristol research centre, first announced in 2023, was expected to employ hundreds of extra AI and software engineers as well as the global tech firm’s commercial and e-commerce teams for Great Britain and Ireland.
It is understood that Dyson staff will no longer move into the building, but will relocate to Malmesbury instead. The Finzels Reach office block, which is owned by the Dyson family, will be rented out to another employer.
Although no date has been set for the relocation to Wiltshire, Business Live understands it will be in spring when the lease on Dyson’s rented office expires. Staff members will be given support with the commute to Malmesbury, about 45-minutes’ drive away.
The news comes less than a year after Dyson announced plans to cut a third of its UK workforce as part of global restructuring. Dyson’s chief executive Hanno Kirner said last year the review would ensure the business was “prepared for the future”.
The campus at Malmesbury was Dyson’s head office until 2019 when founder Sir James Dyson moved the company’s HQ from the UK to Singapore.
The billionaire tycoon has long been a critic of the UK’s economic policies and made the decision post-Brexit to move Dyson’s headquarters closer to its manufacturing sites and supply chains. The move to Asia meant Dyson was able to take advantage of the EU’s free trade agreement and avoid new trade curbs between the UK and the bloc.
Last year, Sir James and his family were revealed to be the wealthiest people in the West of England despite experiencing losses of £2.2bn over the year. According to the Sunday Time Rich List, Britain’s best-known inventor had a fortune of £20.8bn in 2024 – down from £23bn in 2023.
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