HRH The Duke of Gloucester today presented JCB with a Queen’s Award honouring innovation on one of its most successful products.

JCB won the Queen’s Award for Innovation for a system called TorqueLock which cuts fuel consumption on its backhoe loaders.

Today, HRH The Duke of Gloucester presented the Award to Steve Carrington, Managing Director of the Backhoe Loader Business Unit, in a ceremony attended by hundreds of employees at JCB’s World HQ at Rocester.

Since 1969 JCB has won 26 Queen’s Awards – five of which have been presented to the Backhoe Loader Business Unit.

JCB Group Chief Executive Officer Alan Blake said: “Today’s Award is not just a tribute to JCB's products and innovation; it’s a tribute to all of our employees for the part they play in the success of JCB and in making the JCB backhoe the best selling in the world.

"All of our Queen’s Awards are special but when they honour innovation, they take on extra significance because JCB’s success over the past 65 years has been built on innovation. It underpins everything we do.

“It was innovation that led JCB’s founder, Joseph Cyril Bamford, to develop the concept of the backhoe loader nearly 60 years ago. Today JCB is the world market leader for this product - with almost one in two backhoes sold around the world made by JCB. We’ve achieved that success by continually innovating and there’s no better illustration of this than the Torquelock system honoured by today’s Award.”

TorqueLock is patented and unique to JCB machines and offers huge gains in fuel efficiency, something that is of growing importance to JCB's customers.