COLLEAGUES and friends have being paying tribute to businessman extraordinaire and founder of the Heavy Horse Centre, Mike Osmond Jones, who has passed away.

The well-known East Dorset businessman, known to his staff and acquaintances as "OJ", had the Midas touch and by the time he retired his company had a multi-million pound turnover and was the biggest employer in Verwood.

Mike served with the RAF in WW2 and subsequently, although a countryman at heart, embarked on a career in commerce.

In 1973 he founded Key Industrial Equipment, one of the first business to business' catalogues of its type in the UK.

The company was initially based in Poole and later Wimborne until finally, in the early 1980s, it relocated to its present site on the Ebblake Estate in Verwood.

When asked why he had selected Verwood as the company HQ, Mike famously replied: "because I live there."

Under his astute guidance the company prospered and still operates from the same site.

Mike also founded the local Heavy Horse Centre and latterly found time to write a limited edition book Keeping Up With the Osmond Joneses, which was a potted history of his life and his family.

"In business Mike was highly respected by both his staff and trading partners alike," said a spokesman.

"He was a man of the highest integrity and the majority of people with whom he did business would have described him as tough but fair and always good to his word'.

"A very charitable man, Mike took great pleasure in helping those in need and was renowned for taking many strays under his wings.

"He will be missed by his wife Alison, family and friends alike."