26.11.2010

Turkey tycoon Bernard Matthews, Britain's biggest producer, has died.

The business employs more than 2,000 people, farms some 7m turkeys a year, and has an annual turnover of more than £330m.

From simple beginnings, with an initial investment of just £2.50 60 years ago, Bernard Matthews was responsible for taking the business from 20 turkey eggs and a second-hand paraffin incubator to a successful and thriving multimillion-pound company. In the 1960s, Matthews bought airfields used in the second world war for turkey farms, and later in the decade he advised the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, on modernising the Russian poultry industry. By the end of the decade, Matthews was Europe's biggest poultry farmer. In the 1990s, the company's operations spread to Germany, Hungary and New Zealand, and in 2000 Matthews and his management team launched a buyback of shares in the company, returning it to private ownership after 30 years as a listed company.

In February 2007, the H5N1 strain of avian influenza surfaced in the UK at a Bernard Matthews plant at Holton, Suffolk. Nearly 160,000 birds were slaughtered and sales slumped.