Dyson family cleans up as US sales soar

VACUUM-CLEANER tycoon James Dyson awarded himself and his wife a total of £28.9 million after his bagless appliance cleaned up in the US market.

The payout emerged in the Wiltshire-based company's annual results, which revealed turnover up 54 per cent to 426m and profits of 78.2m, nearly twice last year's 39.6m profit haul.

The 1437-strong Dyson workforce was also rewarded for its "outstanding efforts", with staff witnessing their combined pay soar 11m to 58.5m.

Mr Dyson's 28.9m payout exceeded the previous year's by 11.3. The inventor described it as "the most I've taken out of the business by a long way", and said he planned to plough it into new product development.

"I want to put money aside to fund future inventions. When I started it was very, very difficult and I don't want to be in that position again."

Booming US sales were the driving force behind Dyson's robust performance, having quadrupled to 162m.

Although Dyson's cyclone action vacuum cleaners are still outsold by Hoover models by a three-to-one ratio, Mr Dyson said: "We are now No 1 by value in the US. We have transformed ourselves in the past two years. Then we were exporting one-third of our vacuum cleaners. Today it's two-thirds."

Dyson employs 340 developers, 270 of whom are based at the firm's HQ in Malmesbury. The firm spent 39.3m on research and development last year.