USM+Investments

=U.S.M. Investments PLC=

Company Number: SC000813 Date of Incorporation: 4 April 1878 Contact Details: 34 Fettes Row, Edinburgh, Lothian, EH3 6UT Operating Details: Dissolved (23 December 1994) Other names (if known): Scottish Tea and Lands Company Function of Company*: Tea plantation and export (5137), later investment fund (6522) (presumed) Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Sri Lanka Area of Operation: Exported from Sri Lanka


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

Records
I’ve been unable to find any trace of the specific business records of this company. The likelihood is that actual business records of the company were lost when Sri Lanka nationalised its tea plantations in 1971-2, and that the records of directors and shareholders were destroyed when the company dissolved.

Related records: The National Library of Australia hold the records of Manfred Claasz, a former superintendent of the company at Madulsima and Hapotale. Some of those records relate to his employment by the company []

Company History
This was a company established to plant and export tea from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). This company, and many others, were founded in the wake of the success of James Taylor, a Scot who established large plantations in the 1860s. As with many of the company, all the assets were held in Sri Lanka, while the company operations, shareholders and directors were based in Scotland (most probably Edinburgh). Most of the planters and superintendents were British: by 1949 the Scottish Tea and Lands Company had only two ‘Ceylonese’ planters. During the post-Second World War period the Company had estates in Mahadowa, Uda Pusselwa (the Alnwick Estate), Sarnia, Happutale, Cocagalla, Annfield and Rahanwatte in Lindula. In the 50s and 60s the Company also began to employ more local people to work in management- one of the first was Vivien Blaze, who eventually became Manager of Haputale, and then General Manager of the Company. This was also a time of increasing unrest amongst many of the plantation workers, and this unrest was reflected in the increasingly atagonistic relationship between the government and the foreign companies in Sri Lanka. The company assets were presumeably seized by the Sri Lanka Government when the tea estates owned by British companies were nationalised in 1971/2. Although the estates were privatised again in 1992-1993, this was obviously too late to save this company.

No information was available on its investment activities as USM investments.