IT’S a sunny afternoon in the Midlands, and an audience sits waiting in a small grandstand looking out over a bowl-shaped arena mounded with piles of earth.

The music begins. Wagner’s Ride of The Valkyries fills the stand, and three hulking green vehicles roar in accompanied by a volley of fireworks. They race up the hill at the rear of the bowl before going through a busy demonstration of their abilities, shovelling earth, digging trenches and lifting shipping containers.

Welcome to showbiz, JCB-style. Sitting in the second row of the audience and smiling appreciatively is Sir Anthony Bamford, the 61-year-old chairman of the renowned yellow-digger company. The grandstand and arena are in the landscaped grounds of JCB’s world headquarters in the Staffordshire town of Rocester, and the vehicles on show are its next big thing — machines for the world’s armies.

It is rare for JCB to make such a song and dance — it is a notoriously private company. Bamford, whose family is No56 on the Sunday Times Rich List, with a fortune estimated at £950m, rarely gives interviews. His top executives, despite running one of Britain’s largest manufacturing groups, are little known outside the world of construction equipment, where the group ranks No4 in the world.

But so excited is the company about its new products that last week it invited a small group of journalists for a sneak preview.

“We are capable of producing almost anything the military might require of us,” said Bamford. “And because we have a network of 1,000 dealers around the world, we have the ability to support our products in a way that many other manufacturers do not.”

The drive into defence is a sign of bigger changes at JCB. Long pigeonholed as a British-based manufacturer, it is spreading its wings internationally.

In addition to its 10 British plants, it will soon have seven foreign manufacturing bases in operation. Three are in India — one in Delhi, and two in Pune, where the second facility is just being completed — and one each in America, Brazil, China and Germany.

It is also beefing up its management. Tim Leverton, the group engineering director, was hired from BMW, where he oversaw the production of the Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine, while Matthew Taylor, former managing director of Land Rover, was recruited this year to head sales.

When all the new factories are operational, JCB will have the capacity to produce about 70,000 machines a year, a big jump from last year’s 45,000, the best in the company’s history. The extra capacity could not arrive at a better time — the booming construction market in America, India and China means that demand for JCB’s products has gone through the roof. The company said it made profits of £110m last year on sales of £1.4 billion, up from £55m and £1.1 billion in 2004.

A large chunk of the new production could be taken up building the new military machines. John Patterson, JCB’s chief executive, said as much as 10% of the 70,000 production could be military-equipment sales.

JCB is not, however, going into the tank business. The machines on display last week were diggers, forklifts and tractors. The company has a long relationship with military customers — Bamford said its sales to the Ministry of Defence date back to 1984 — but until now it has sold militarised versions of its civil products.

Last week’s show was of vehicles specifically designed for the world’s armies. One, which labours under the name of the High Mobility Engineer Excavator is already a sales success. The Pentagon has signed a contract under which it could eventually buy 1,000 over the next six years. Last week the first evaluation vehicles, built in JCB’s American plant, were delivered to the US Army.

Back in the Staffordshire factory, JCB executives showed off another radical departure for the company — a vehicle designed not to dig holes or lift things, but to carry people.

The High Mobility Utility Vehicle will carry up to eight soldiers and eight tonnes of payload. It could also be used as a platform for weapons. So far JCB has only a mock-up of the truck, with a running version likely to be on the road in September.

Military-vehicle experts say production of the High Mobility Utility Vehicle could be a canny move by JCB, taking it into a market currently dominated by small, specialist companies. “The great advantage they have is a worldwide network of dealers — if the thing goes wrong they can fix it quickly,” said one analyst.

JCB’s management was quick to play down suggestions that the company might eventually move into road vehicles. General Motors’ Hummer sports-utility vehicle, a sales sensation in America, began life as a military truck.

“I don’t really think that is our market,” said Patterson.

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