Jimi Heselden, a former coal miner and entrepreneur from Britain, had a net worth of $250 million.
On March 27, 1948, James William “Jimi” Heselden was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, as Jimi Heselden.
After leaving Osmondthorpe Secondary Modern School at the age of 15, Heselden began working as a laborer before working at collieries in Temple Newsam and Lofthouse.
Due to the layoffs that occurred after the 1984-85 miners’ strike, he was unemployed and used his spare time to establish a sandblasting business. He then went on to develop and patent a collapsible wire mesh and fabric container, now known as Hesco bastion, for building flood management and limiting erosion. Heselden founded Hesco Bastion Ltd in 1989 to manufacture containers filled with sand or earth, which quickly gained favor among the armies of various countries for building effective blast walls, barriers and revetments that could be quickly constructed.
Hesco’s factory in Leeds produced these items, which were later used for flood defenses in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. These items were shipped in large quantities to conflict zones such as Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
On September 26, 2010, he lost his life when the Segway he was riding crashed off a cliff and he fell 80 feet into the river.