After wiping the floor with the Japanese, Malmesbury-based Dyson is now cleaning up in Germany where it has become the nation’s most popular manufacturer of cleaning machines.

In an independent survey of consumers, the German Institute for Quality ranked the company number one for the household product, ahead of its own giants Miele, Vorwerk, Siemens, AEG, Bosch and Karcher.

A Dyson spokesman said: “Germany has traditionally been perceived to be the powerhouse of engineering and manufacturing.”

She said it was home to highly inventive family enterprise, but a British family-run firm was out-performing them, according to German consumers. The award’s focus was on quality, value and warranty and the success mirrored Dyson’s Japan story.

“The Japanese have many of their own consumer electronics successes, yet Dyson is the market leader in Japanese floor care for the first time and has consolidated that position during 2014,” said the spokesman.

The company – which is is expanding its Malmesbury research and development centre – has just unveiled its latest product: an upright cleaner so efficient at separating dust it does not require any filter maintenance.

The Dyson Cinetic Big Ball, described as “the upright cleaner that truly never loses suction,” arrives 22 years after the company unveiled a machine with no bags to change.

Its upright without filters is the result of six years’ work in perfecting “cyclone technology".

Sir James said: “Removing the bag from a vacuum solved one hassle, but filter maintenance remained an annoying problem.”

During research, Dyson experts spent 9,000 hours in real homes and the lab to calculate vacuum usage patterns and their relation to dust pick-up.

By conducting tests using the equivalent of 10 years’ worth of dust, they showed Dyson Cinetic maintained constant suction, without changing or washing a filter.

Backing international students

SIR James Dyson has hit out at plans by Home Secretary Theresa May to expel overseas students as soon as they graduate, warning it will help Britain’s international competitors.

The inventor, whose ethos is “we must relentlessly invent”, fears a self-inflicted brain drain could occur.
Mrs May said she wanted the Conservative election manifesto to include a commitment to compel students from outside the EU to leave the UK once they have completed their degree.

But, writing in The Guardian, Sir James said the Government should be encouraging the brightest graduates to stay and develop their ideas for the benefit of the British economy.

He said: “Give them our knowledge, allow them to develop their own, and permit them to apply it here on our shores. Their ideas and inventiveness will create technology to export around the world.

“Sending them home with new technology developed here presents good value to our competitor nations.”