Richard John Budge (19 April 1947 – 18 July 2016) was a coal mining entrepreneur and chairman of The Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisations.

Early life

He went to

Boston Grammar School The Boston Grammar School is a selective grammar school and sixth form college for boys aged 11 to 18 and girls attending the sixth form aged 16–18 located in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. A recent 2021 Ofsted report assessed the school ov ...

in Lincolnshire. He studied Fine Arts at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

Career

He entered the coal mining industry when he joined the company of

Retford Retford (), also known as East Retford, is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England, and one of the oldest English market towns having been granted its first charter in 1105. It lies on the River Idle and the Chesterfie ...

-based A.F. Budge, owned by his brother Tony (1939–2010), which ran opencast mines. It was also involved in civil engineering schemes such as the construction of motorways. The company also sponsored the

December Gold Cup The December Gold Cup (run since 2022 as the Ais December Gold Cup) is a Premier Handicap National Hunt steeplechase in Great Britain which is open to horses aged four years or older. It is run on the Ne ...

horse race at

Cheltenham Racecourse Cheltenham Racecourse at Prestbury Park, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, hosts National Hunt horse racing. Its most prestigious meeting is the Cheltenham Festival, held in March, which features several Grade I races including the C ...

from 1988 to 1991. In February 1992, Richard Budge bought the opencast coal and Plant division from the family business with venture capital backing from Schroder Ventures for circa £103m, a transaction approved by Charterhouse Ventures and Prudential Ventures which were preference shareholders of AF Budge. A.F. Budge was majority owned by his elder brother Tony Budge.

RJB Mining

When the UK coal industry was privatised in 1994, Budge bought most of the pits for £815m, forming RJB Mining, which he had started in 1992 after buying his brother's opencast business division for £102.5m. This led to Budge being christened ''King Coal''. He bought three out of five packages of the UK coal industry (17 deep mine pits) on 30 December 1994 for around £700m. At the time there were 19 deep mines left in the UK. The last of these remaining deep mine pits,

Kellingley Colliery Kellingley Colliery was a deep coal mine in North Yorkshire, England, east of Ferrybridge power station. It was owned and operated by UK Coal. The colliery closed on 18 December 2015, marking the end of deep-pit coal mining in Britain. Th ...

, closed on 18 December 2015. When the Labour government came to power, Budge informed the government that the pits would have to close unless he secured long-term contracts from the electricity generators

National Power National power is defined as the sum of all resources available to a nation in the pursuit of national objectives. Assessing the national power of political entities was already a matter of relevance during the classical antiquity, the middle ages ...

and Powergen (now called

E.ON UK E.ON UK is a British energy company and the largest supplier of energy and renewable electricity in the UK, following its acquisition of Npower. It is a subsidiary of E.ON of Germany and one of the Big Six energy suppliers. It was founded in ...

). On 14 July 2001 he quit as CEO of RJB Mining, which later became known as

UK Coal UK Coal Production Ltd, formerly UK Coal plc, was the largest coal mining business in the United Kingdom. The company was based in Harworth, in Nottinghamshire. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The successor company that co ...

Coalpower

He formed the company, Coalpower, in 2001. It bought the Hatfield Colliery, at Stainforth, in April 2004 from Hatfield Coal Company, helped by £7m of state aid. In late 2003, Coalpower went into administration.

Powerfuel

His company, Powerfuel, was 48% owned by Budge and 52% owned by KRU, Russia's second biggest coal company. In April 2007, he re-opened the pit at Stainforth, at a cost of £100m. financed by £50m from

VTB Bank VTB Bank (; formerly known as ''Vneshtorgbank'', , lit. 'International Trade Bank') is a Russian majority state-owned bank headquartered in various federal districts of Russia; its legal address is registered in St. Petersburg; as of 2022 ...

. Powerfuel went into administration in December 2010 owing £80 m to a combination of VTB Bank and

ING Group The ING Group ( nl, ING Groep) is a Dutch multinational corporation, multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment ...

Personal life

In 1968 he married Rosalind White and lived at

Wiseton Wiseton is a small village, country estate and civil parish, Nottinghamshire, England, situated between the villages of Gringley-on-the-Hill and Everton, approximately southeast of Bawtry and west of Gainsborough. There is also a nearby ham ...

in north

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

near

Gringley-on-the-Hill Gringley on the Hill, Nottinghamshire, is an English village and parish. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 699. It is on the highest part of the road from Bawtry to Gainsborough, six miles east-southeast of the former ...

, close to the

A631 The A631 is a road running from Sheffield, South Yorkshire to Louth, Lincolnshire in England. It passes through the counties of South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. The road has many towns on its route including Rotherham, Mal ...

. He was a member of the

Worshipful Company of Fuellers The Worshipful Company of Fuellers is one of the livery companies of the City of London. It is now associated with the whole energy sector, but has its roots in coal: the Fuellers, or coal traders, were originally members of the Woodmongers' ...

.. Richard Budge died of prostate cancer on 18 July 2016 in Retford, Nottinghamshire.

References

External links

''Independent'' article August 2007

''Yorkshire Post'' December 2006 article

NUM 2006 article

* ttp://powerassetmodelling.co.uk/html/hatfield_igcc_.html Hatfield IGCC Project {{DEFAULTSORT:Budge, Richard 1947 births 2016 deaths Alumni of the University of Manchester British construction businesspeople British mining businesspeople English chief executives People educated at Boston Grammar School People from Wiseton People from Boston, Lincolnshire 20th-century English businesspeople