‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’, says Ineos boss Sir Jim Ratcliffe

Buccaneering entrepreneur Sir Jim Ratcliffe believes you need a bit of luck in life.

“But the harder you work, the luckier you get – I really believe that,” says Britain’s richest man.

The 70-year-old billionaire is in a buoyant mood at the launch of his latest commercial venture, the Grenadier 4×4 off-roader, made in the spirit of the now-discontinued Land Rover Defender.

As the founder and majority owner of the giant chemical company Ineos Group, his business interests already span from oil and gas and petrochemicals to hand sanitizers and the luxury motorcycle-inspired clothing company Belstaff.

Then there’s the sport, including Formula 1 car racing with Mercedes-Benz, sailing with Sir Ben Ainslie and cycling with the Ineos Grenadiers.

There’s football too, with his company owning French Ligue 1 side OGC Nice and Swiss Challenge League club FC Lausanne-Sport, and now considering making a bid for Manchester United, the team he supports since he was a boy.

But when we meet in the Scottish Highlands, his focus is the Grenadier.

The setting is the Royal Castle of Mey, just six miles from John O’Groats on the Caithness coast, where Ratcliffe hosts an exclusive Grenadier launch dinner at the former residence of the late Queen Mother, now a rural retreat for the King.

The first Grenadier deliveries are underway, order books stretch to six months and there are 24 sales and service centers in the UK out of 200 worldwide.

At its peak, its pristine factory in Hambach, France, will produce between 25,000 and 30,000 Grenadiers a year, a third of which will go to the US.

The plans don’t stop there. Ratcliffe says Ineos Automotive will launch the next battery-powered zero-emissions 4×4 in 2026 with a range of 250 miles, enough to take you from London to Manchester.

After actually signing it, he says, “It looks pretty good.”

This year, Ineos will also put a hydrogen fuel cell electric Grenadier prototype on the road before hitting showrooms towards the end of the decade, though it thinks hydrogen is still “a long way off” due to the lack of refueling infrastructure.

Ratcliffe is tall, slim, imposing and charismatic. A Northerner who enjoys running and cycling says what he thinks, has a colorful expression and a sharp sense of humour, and is mischievous.

He talks passionately about his adventures and travels, clearly unafraid to take calculated risks in business – and, you guess, in life – but negotiates hard, charges every cent and demands compensation.

His story is from rags to riches. He was a bright boy from a Greater Manchester town hall in Failsworth near Oldham, who was educated at a state secondary school in Beverley near Hull, and became a billionaire entrepreneur with a fortune of nearly £14 billion.

His career included a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham and an MBA from London Business School before working for Exxon, Courtaulds and private equity.

Ratcliffe took out a mortgage on his family home in 1992 at the age of 40 to finance his first purchase and laid the foundations for his Ineos empire.

His latest Grenadier 4×4 project has not been without challenges or controversy. And like all good stories, it started in a pub.

As a car, 4×4 and motorcycle enthusiast, Ratcliffe loved the robust, original Land Rover Defender, which was discontinued in January 2016.

His offer to buy the production line and keep it running was rejected. So, sitting at The Grenadier pub in London’s Belgravia in 2017, he conceived the idea of ​​creating a new model, identifying a gap in the market for “a stripped-down, utilitarian, hard-working 4×4 designed for modern day compliance and reliability’. .

No less than a bob or two, and seeing potential, he founded Ineos Automotive to build the classic 4×4 of his dreams and hired experts to bring his vision to life.

Ineos’ technical partner is Austrian specialist Magna Steyr, and the original concept vehicle was designed by MBtech, a Mercedes-Benz spin-off.

The three-liter petrol and diesel engines are supplied by BMW. Ratcliffe, a fan of BMW motorcycles, raves about the German bikes, saying, “You can beat them up. They are incredibly well made.’

Originally, the Grenadier was to be built on the site of the former Ford Bridgend engine plant in South Wales, where preparatory work was already underway.

Then Ratcliffe took a call from Mercedes-Benz boss Ola Kallenius, who made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

They already knew each other well, partly because of Ineos’ share in the Mercedes-Benz racing team of F1 driver Lewis Hamilton.

“We have a good relationship with them,” says Ratcliffe.

Mercedes wanted to unload its state-of-the-art factory in Hambach after deciding to move production elsewhere. Was he interested?

Ratcliffe purchased the 200-acre facility with its highly skilled 1,000-strong ex-Mercedes-Benz employees in January 2021 for an undisclosed amount believed to have been an absolute bargain.

Some suggest that Mercedes may have even paid him to take over from them. So was this deal the bargain of the century?

“I haven’t made any money with it yet,” he says with a laugh.

However, both parties were satisfied, says Ratcliffe, adding, “I’m not going to embarrass anyone. Were happy.’

The economic case for Hambach over Bridgend proved simply irresistible. So hopes for a new factory and jobs in Britain were dashed, causing frustration in the UK. Adding to the flak he received from critics who were already angry, he supported Brexit but lived as a tax exile in Monaco and Switzerland.

But Ratcliffe is unperturbed and says, “We’re in a much better place than if we had had to build a new factory.”

On top of the factory dispute, Jaguar Land Rover has launched a number of failed lawsuits against Ineos for the ‘lookalike’ 4×4. Then, due to Covid and the conflict in Ukraine, project costs skyrocketed.

“We thought it would be €1 billion and ended up spending €1.5 billion,” says Ratcliffe.

But unlike Sir James Dyson, who pulled the plug on his own ambitious electric car plans, Ratcliffe says they “never really came close to canning.”

As a general rule for his companies, he says, “we pay a fair price, not a stupid price.”

He continues: “We want to buy good assets. We aim to double our profit over a period of five years.’

It requires “self-discipline,” he says, adding, “It takes time to learn.” You have to bring in high caliber people. Automotive is no different. Sports is no different.

“Football is the same. There’s a lot to learn.’ As Ineos Automotive moved from project to commercial reality, Ratcliffe appointed Scot Lynn Calder as CEO. Companies within Ineos are given a high degree of autonomy, but must perform.

Ratcliffe encourages his top executives to take stock in the companies they run.

His Ineos Group now employs 26,000 people in 36 companies in 29 countries and has an annual turnover of around £45 billion.

His hectic global business life – from the US to China where he has a joint venture – means he is constantly on the move. “I’m never in the same place for long,” he says.

With homes and superyachts all over the world, Ratcliffe owns a Grenadier and a Mercedes G-Wagon in the French ski resort of Courchevel.

He talks passionately about his off-road adventures in the wilderness of Namibia and the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

He has been to both the North and South Poles and in 2015 made a month-long motorcycle trip in South Africa.

He’s come a long way already. But you can bet he’ll be raising a full glass to his latest car adventure the next time he’s at the Grenadier pub.