Scottish+Assam+Tea

=[|Scottish Assam Tea Company Limited]=

Company Number: SC000194 Date of Incorporation: 10 April 1865 Contact Details: Exchange Place 3, Semple Street, Edinburgh, EH3 8BL Operating Details: Active Other names (if known): Function of Company*: Holding companies including head offices (7415), previously tea exporting/planting (5137) Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Edinburgh Area of Operation: Assam, India


 * Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records
Held By:[|London Metropolitan Archives] CLC/B/123-49

Scope/type: The records comprise: memorandum and articles of association, 1865, 1924 (Ms 28112); ledger, 1927-69 (Ms 28113); plans, 1863-4, ca. 1925 (Ms 28114-15); and correspondence and other papers 1927 (Ms 28116)

Conditions governing access/use: Standard LMA rules, must be booked in advance

Related records:

Company History
Company of tea growers and manufacturers, operating in Assam, India, 1865-1969. It was fromed in 1865 to purchase, cultivate and extend the Heelekah, Mazengah and Karsoolie Estates in Assam. By 1898 it was listed as owning and improving estates in the Sibsagor District of Assam that comprised 6000 acres, and its directors were George Williamson, James Morton, TR Marshall, T Deas Boyd, Robert Turnball and Colin George Macrae. It subsequently became part of the Inchcape Group of companies and wound down operations in India in 1969. Its surviving archives were deposited in the Manuscripts Section of Guildhall Library in 1987-88. They were catalogued in 1988-9.

Notes on the Inchcape Group Archives
Efforts to consolidate the extensive international investments of the Inchcape family and the directorships and partnerships held by the third Earl of Inchcape resulted in the public launch of a parent holding company, Inchcape and Co Ltd, in 1958. Interests in merchant trading, shipping and agency houses had been built up since 1874 when James Lyle Mackay (from 1911 the first Earl of Inchcape) joined the Calcutta-based merchant and agency firm of Mackinnon, Mackenzie and Co, established in 1847 by William Mackinnon. Mackinnon's business empire extended beyond India to Australia, the Middle East and East Africa. Founder of the British India Steam Navigation Co Ltd (whose historic records are at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich) and the Australasian United Steam Navigation Co Ltd, he also set up agency firms at strategic ports (Gray, Dawes and Co in London; Gray, Mackenzie and Co and Gray, Paul and Co in the Persian Gulf; and Smith, Mackenzie and Co in Zanzibar) to handle the passenger and merchandise cargo carried alongside the Royal Mail.

As Mackinnon's commercial heir, Mackay had risen by the 1890s to the position of partner within the firm. He had also begun a personal investment portfolio, buying major shareholdings in Indian tea estates (among them Assam Estates Co Ltd, Greenwood Tea Co Ltd, Northern Dooars Tea Co Ltd and Salonah Tea Co ltd), textile firms (Binny and Co Ltd) and their English and Indian managing agents (Macneill and Co, Duncan Macneill and Co, Barry and Co and J B Barry and Son) and in two river steamer companies (Rivers Steam Navigation Co Ltd and India General Steam Navigation Co Ltd) and their managing agents (Kilburn and Co). Before 1958, there was no structural link between the majority of these companies, whose common denominator was the Inchcape family interest in them. However, after the Second World War, change was necessary, especially in newly independent India, for reasons of taxation and other economic restrictions placed on foreign companies. The option finally decided on by the third Earl of Inchcape was for a rationalisation of holdings and the incorporation of those retained into a single publicly quoted company based in London rather than India. After the launch of the Inchcape Group in 1958, the group expanded very rapidly, both by the development of existing companies and their range of activities, and by the purchase of other groups: among them, the Borneo Co Ltd in 1967, Dodwell and Co Ltd in 1972, Anglo Thai Corporation in 1975 and Assam Co Ltd in 1980. The London headquarters of Inchcape and Co Ltd was at 40 St Mary Axe, 1960-88, and St James House, 23 King Street, Westminster,

The records both of the companies brought together in 1958, and of those acquired subsequently, were deposited in the Manuscripts Section of Guildhall Library between May 1987 and December 1988. (These records were all made an outright gift to Guildhall Library in June 1995.) They were catalogued in 1988-9. No records of Inchcape and Co Ltd were deposited. The archives are catalogued under the names of the individual companies within the group. Each individual company catalogue has its own introductory note setting out its history. Those companies with significant archives have more extensive notes; other notes are necessarily rather brief. 1897 listing from ‘Tea Producing Companies of India and Ceylon showing the history and results of those capitalised in Stirling’ by Gow, Wilson and Stanton (A Soutiiey & Co, London March 1897) Accessed from [] on 22nd December 2010