THIS week marks the centenary of the birth of Kenneth Wood, founder and manufacturer of the eponymous Kenwood Chef food mixer.

Grandson of confectionery manufacturer Charles Riley Maynard, founder of wine gums firm Maynards, Kenneth Wood was born in Lewisham, London on October 4, 1916, and died on October 19, 1997, aged 81.

He was brought up in Chelsfield, Kent, and educated at Bromley County School before leaving home in 1930, aged 14 to join the Merchant Navy for five years, after which, he set up his own company, Dickson & Wood, selling, installing and repairing radios and televisions.

In 1939, he sold the company and joined the Royal Air Force where he worked as an engineer at the Admiralty developing radar and electronic controls.After the war, he founded Woodlau Industries, with wartime colleague Roger Laurence, starting production in 1947, in Woking, with the A100 turnover toaster, and then the A200 food mixer – the predecessor of the Kenwood Chef which was launched in 1950.

When Roger Laurence left the company, Ken changed the name to Kenwood Manufacturing Company. The company moved down the A3 to Havant, in Hampshire, in 1961, then employing a workforce of 700.

Within a few years of setting up the company, he was one of Britain’s youngest millionaires.

The company later set up factories in many countries around the world, as well as an international dealer network. However, in 1968, when the company employed 1,800 in the UK and another 400 abroad, Wood parted company with Kenwood Manufacturing after a hostile takeover by Thorn Electrical Industries.

After Kenwood, he became chairman and managing director of the Dawson-Keith Group of companies that made electric generators.

In 1978, the company was granted the Queen’s Award for Export.

Ken married his second wife, Patricia, the same year on September 15. She is still a resident in Liphook.

In 1961, he founded Forest Mere Health Farm – now Champneys Forest Mere – in Liphook, and being a keen golfer, in 1982, he developed a 350-acre golf course in the grounds of his and Patricia’s home in Liphook, which is now the Old Thorns Golf and Country Estate.

In 1984, he was appointed Fellow of the Institute of Ophthalmology. In 1993, Ken was listed in Business Age magazine as one of the richest individuals in Britain, worth £24.5million and in 1995, he officially opened the Science Museum’s permanent ‘Secret Life of the Home’ exhibition which includes several Kenwood exhibits. 

The company he created and its iconic labour-saving products – the Kenwood Chef being the most well-known – quickly became a household name, synonymous with high quality the world over.

Some Kenwood Chefs, now 50 or even 60 years old, are still in perfect working order today.

Some come with happy nostalgic memories because relatives used it to make cakes when they were children, or because they received a Chef as a wedding gift many years ago.

Known as “the world’s most versatile kitchen machine”, many millions of Kenwood Chefs have been sold to date, and a Kenwood product is purchased every three seconds.

To mark Kenwood’s 70th anniversary next year, a book about its history and Ken’s never-before-seen autobiography will be published.