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Bob
Desanike Pedda Bewarse
Username: Bob
Post Number: 6889
Registered: 03-2005
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United States Cold Storage, Inc. and its several predecessor companies have been providing refrigerated storage services to the food industry since 1889. Today, USCS is a leading national public refrigerated warehouse operator with a network of facilities across the United States comprising over 130 million cubic feet. The company serves a customer base with requirements ranging from primary storage to fully integrated third party logistic solutions for a complete range of perishable food products.
United States Cold Storage, Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdom and Hong Kong based Swire Group in 1982. The Swire Group was founded in the United Kingdom in 1816 and now has substantial investments in refrigerated warehousing, shipping, road transport, soft drink manufacturing, aviation, property and trading in the United States, Australia, Asia and the United Kingdom.
Swire is the major provider of refrigerated warehousing in Australia (Swire Cold Storage) and has opened its first cold storage facility in Vietnam, Swire Cold Storage in Ho Chi Minh City. Swire has also established Finlay Cold Storage (PVT) LTD. in Sri Lanka, a facility that is being expanded to offer a total of 2 million cubic feet of temperature controlled storage space. In addition to these public warehousing interests, the Swire Group also operates a number of dedicated facilities for the use of subsidiary companies.
The USCS operating team, enhanced by years of training, education and best practice, provides reliable support to thousands of customers with a variety of refrigerated warehouse, transportation and logistics services. Across the country, food companies of all sizes have come to rely on their partnership with United States Cold Storage as an important competitive advantage.
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Bob
Desanike Pedda Bewarse
Username: Bob
Post Number: 6888
Registered: 03-2005
Posted From: 69.138.230.38
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Votes: 0(Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007 - 11:57 pm: | |
time pass thread ..
how family owned businesses went on to become multi m companies with multi continental presence..
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Bob
Desanike Pedda Bewarse
Username: Bob
Post Number: 6887
Registered: 03-2005
Posted From: 69.138.230.38
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Votes: 0(Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007 - 11:54 pm: | |
CNH represents a family of brands that have shaped the history of agricultural equipment. The CNH heritage includes the combined legacies of Braud, Case, Claeys, Fiat, Flexicoil, Ford, International Harvester, New Holland, Steyr, and many others. This rich heritage of leadership defines our organization today.
In the first years of mechanization in the agricultural industry, our companies were in their simple beginnings. Men like Cyrus Hall McCormick and his reaper, Jerome Increase Case and his thresher, Abe Zimmerman and his portable feed mill, Leon Claeys and his threshing machine, Alexandre Braud and his stationary thresher, and Henry Ford and his Fordson Tractor were literally dreaming the future of working machines.
The history of International Harvester began in the fields of Virginia during the 1830’s on the farm of Robert McCormick. At the time, one of the most demanding, backbreaking jobs was reaping the standing grain. Between 1810 and 1830, Robert McCormick experimented with mechanizing this process. His son, Cyrus McCormick, continued his father's work and developed a working version of a mechanical reaper in 1831. This reaper would serve as the impetus for the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, formed in 1848 in Chicago. Fifty years later McCormick’s son, Cyrus H. McCormick, led the effort to bring together the largest harvester manufacturers of the day to form International Harvester in 1902 with McCormick at the head. McCormick and International Harvester pioneered the first dealer distribution channel, the first full-line product offering (implements, tractors, harvesting, hay, etc), the first diesel wheel tractor in the U.S., and the first single rotor (Axial-Flow) combine. International Harvester’s signature product, the famous Farmall tractor, was the pioneer for row-crop tractors.
A contemporary of Cyrus McCormick and just ten years his junior, Jerome Increase Case was also making his mark on agriculture in the mid-1800’s. In 1842, Case founded his "Racine Threshing Machine Works" on the strength of his innovative thresher. His wooden thresher greatly increased grain production during the busy harvest season, enabling 10 times more wheat per day to be threshed than hand methods. This increased level of production was critical during the Civil War period when hands were short and demand for wheat was high. While the thresher was, quite literally, putting bread on the table for J.I. Case, his company expanded into the steam engine business in 1869. Using a locomotive type boiler to develop about 8 horsepower for driving threshers and sawmills by belt, farmers loved the steam engines because they could run all day. By 1886, Case was the world’s largest manufacturer of steam engines, and by the late 1930’s threshing machine sales dropped to a level that accounted for only a fraction of Case business. The machine upon which a company had been built had outlived its practical usefulness, but not before the 100,000th thresher came off the assembly line.
In 1864 Josef Werndl founded the Steyr company with a vision for making bicycles. While he did eventually get into the bicycle business, for many years Steyr grew as a diversified industrial manufacturer. In 1915 the company first entered the tractor business, and grew in stature until their defining moment in 1947 – the introduction of the legendary "180" model tractors. This marked the company’s entry into large-scale tractor production and established Steyr as the market leader in the Austrian market. With the "180" models Steyr made a considerable contribution towards improving working conditions, profitability and productivity in the agricultural sector. In the sixties, Steyr went on to introduce the first Steyr crop loader and the first Steyr four-wheel drive tractor. Today the Steyr brand is known for its innovative and high-tech solutions for agricultural, forestry and municipal companies.
Braud is the oldest company of those united today under the blue leaf logo of New Holland. It was in 1875 that the stationary threshers constructed by Alexandre Braud started to earn a reputation throughout the Loire-Atlantique region of western France. A plant was set up at St.Mars-La-Jaille, France in 1898 and later transferred to Coex, France. Growth continued for over seventy years and the achievements were impressive. But the harvester market entered a crisis period in the 1970s and Braud turned its attention to a new customer with vast potential: the vine grower. Work in vineyards was still done manually as in previous centuries. Introducing machinery into that magical process, full of tradition, which is the grape harvest did not prove easy. Vine growers saw the need but maintained that it was impossible for a machine to gather a fruit as delicate as the grape. However, with the close co-operation of their customers, Braud introduced the model 1020 in 1975: the first Braud grape harvester. The 1020 was a commercial success, but as a pioneering product left room for improvement. In 1979, Braud unveiled its improved model, the famous Braud 1014, the best-selling grape harvester in the history of the vineyard. The French market rocketed closely followed by the German market. Four years later there were over 2,000 Braud grape harvesters at work in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
In October, 1895, the opening of a one-man repair shop on the edge of New Holland, Pennsylvania drew little attention. But this tiny shop, and its 26-year-old machinist Abe Zimmerman, were the birth of a company that would one day sell its machines on every continent. Zimmerman’s New Holland Machine Company would carve its niche in the 20th century as an innovator of agricultural equipment. Included among the company’s early industry firsts are the portable feed mill in 1899, the freeze-proof cylinder tank engine in 1901, and the stone crusher in 1910. These machines and others like them propelled record growth for the company through the 1920’s, but then came the Great Depression. Like most companies during these difficult years, New Holland verged on the brink of failure, hammering out an existence with whatever foundry contract work could be found. But even as the company struggled to survive in the spring of 1937, a solution to its problems was being pulled through a field of early cut rye almost within sight of the factory. In 1940, New Holland introduced the revolutionary Nolt mobile pickup hay baler. This product reestablished the company as a leader in agricultural equipment. What followed was a shift in direction towards hay and forage equipment, with improved forage harvesters, rakes, and spreaders. As the 1950’s approached, New Holland was poised to become the industry leader in grassland farming.
Born in 1879, Leon Claeys began his career as a bicycle repairman at the age of 18. Having spent some time in the world of agriculture, Claeys knew how labor intensive the job of harvesting and threshing was, a process then carried out entirely by hand. Setting out to improve upon this process, Claeys founded his own company, "Werkhuizen Leon Claeys", in 1906. Three years later, he built his plant in Zedelgem, Belgium where operations remain today. His first threshing machine was stationary and powered by a horse in a treadmill. While very successful, Claeys immediately began work on a diesel engine to replace the horse, and in 1947 the stationary thresher was at the height of its success.
Henry Ford had something other than cars on his mind in 1883. A 20-year-old just off the farm, he was thinking about how fieldwork could be better done by machines. After he mastered the assembly line automobile in the early 1900’s, Ford returned his attention to tractors with the 1917 formation of Henry Ford and Son. By the end of that year, Fordson tractors were coming off the assembly line, and an order for 7,000 was placed by Great Britain to boost wartime food production. During the 1920’s, 75 percent of U.S. farms used a Fordson tractor. Henry Ford had for a second time in his life now dominated an industry, and he didn’t let up. The middle of the 20th century was filled with more tractor innovations, like the three-point hydraulic hitch, and the famous 9N Ford Tractor for only $595. By 1966, Ford Tractors were number two in sales worldwide, and as more North American land went into production, Ford responded with more models and larger tractors.
The First World War was still raging when a group of influential industrialists and government members met in a field outside Turin with Giovanni Agnelli to see Fiat’s very first agricultural tractor. This tractor, the Model 702, was the first agricultural tractor to be produced in Italy, and perhaps the whole of Europe. It went on sale in 1919 and was manufactured alongside cars and trucks in Fiat’s original Turin factory. Built for plowing and powering stationary threshing machines, the Model 702 was rated one of the most efficient tractors in the world and enjoyed very strong export sales. It played a major role in the farm mechanization revolution that took place in the early 20th century.
Flexicoil, founded in 1952 by Emerson and Kenneth Summach, began as a family owned and operated business based in Western Canada. The first product developed and marketed was the coil packer, used in the seeding process. While the simple perfection of coil packer technology makes the product as relevant today as it was then, Flexi-Coil’s emphasis on research and development has since broadened the company’s offerings to include seeding, planting, tillage and chemical application equipment that set industry standards. Over nearly 50 years, a focus on solving growers’ problems with innovative technology allowed Flexi-Coil to expand from their base to markets around the globe.
The tradition of innovation runs deep throughout the roots of all of our brands. Over the course of the last 170 years, we have been dreaming and creating the future of agricultural mechanization. This spirit of innovation has been a driving force behind the growth of all our companies over the years, and one of the common elements that has unified them today. This spirit is also very much a part of our ongoing strategy as we continue to grow and define the future of mechanized farming.
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Bob
Desanike Pedda Bewarse
Username: Bob
Post Number: 6886
Registered: 03-2005
Posted From: 69.138.230.38
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Votes: 0(Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007 - 11:51 pm: | |
BEGINNINGS
Swire has its origins in a modest
Liverpool import-export company, which first opened its doors for business in the early years of the nineteenth century. The founder of the business, John Swire (1793-1847), was a Yorkshireman, born in the prosperous mill town of Halifax. His ancestors had been landowners in the area for more than 150 years, before his grandfather went into business as a wool merchant in the late 1750s. By the 1790s, however, the woollen industry was under pressure from cheap imports of cotton from the New World, and first John's grandfather, and then his father were declared bankrupt.
By now in his late teens, John Swire set off to seek his fortune in Liverpool - then the thriving centre of British trade. Offered a place in a cousin's general import agency, he worked hard, and after only a few years' apprenticeship, struck out in business under his own name in 1816. His determination and industry saw his little company thrive, based around a core trade in textiles, which ironically centred on the import of New Orleans raw cotton and the export of Lancashire cotton piece goods. By his death in 1847, he was able to pass on a modestly prosperous trading house to his two sons, John Samuel and William Hudson Swire (1830-1884).
Then aged 22, John Samuel Swire (1825-1898) was already a formidable businessman, whose entrepreneurial instincts would be at the root of the firm's successes in years to come. In his 20s he travelled widely throughout the United States - at one stage, reputedly holding the postal franchise for the State of Arkansas - and in 1854, he sailed for Australia to prospect fruitlessly for gold, but more successfully for new business, opening a branch office in Melbourne in 1855. Although he rapidly put this business into the hands of agents, the creation of “Swire Bros.” was an important step for the firm, since it effectively turned its attention from Atlantic to Pacific trades. It was to become the basis for a growing export trade to Australia of all manner of goods, from fencing wire and cement to olive oil and Guinness - which John Swire & Sons bottled and exported as Dagger Stout during the 1860s.
John Swire returned to Liverpool in advance of the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, but its disastrous impact on the cotton trade would soon take effect. Fortunately, the brothers had already sold their shares in Evangeline and Theodore - two cotton-trade sailing ships, which had been their first experiment in ship owning during the 1850s. It was therefore with a relatively clean slate that they turned to the “new” China trade, as a source of those valuable imports, tea and silk, and as a potential market for their textiles.
CHINA AND BEYOND
For years a closed country, China had only begun to emerge onto the world market some 20 years earlier, when the Treaty of Nanking opened a handful of coastal ports to foreign trade. Before this, the foreign trading hongs had only been permitted to set up shop in the southern port of Canton (Guangzhou). A quarter of a century on, the focus of China's trade with the West had switched to Shanghai, at the mouth of the mighty Yangtze River.
But China was a long way from home, and frustrated by lacklustre agents, John Swire was soon itching for more direct involvement. At this point fate stepped in, in the guise of an old friend, the Liverpool ship owner Alfred Holt, who approached Swire early in 1865, with an interesting proposition. An engineer by trade, Holt had designed a new breed of steamers - fast, but low on fuel consumption - with which he meant to steal the Liverpool-Far East fast service from the tea clippers. It took little to persuade Swire to invest in his friend's Ocean Steam Ship Company, (later better known as the Blue Funnel Line), and in return, Holt offered to make Swire his China agent, if he was prepared to set up on his own account in Shanghai.
Thus encouraged, John Samuel Swire sailed for Shanghai in 1866, and on 4th December a small notice appeared in the North China Daily News announcing the formation of a new company: Butterfield & Swire. Richard Shackleton Butterfield - a Bradford wool and worsted manufacturer who was one of Swire's major export clients - was to prove a short-term partner. Within two years, the alliance had been dissolved - although the new agency was to keep his name for another 100 years. In keeping with local tradition, however, John Swire soon chose a Chinese “hong” name for the company, and it is as Taikoo () - meaning “Great and Ancient”, that Swire is most widely known in Asia today.
By 1870, Taikoo had branch offices in Yokohama, at a number of China coast ports and in Hong Kong. Offices had also been established in Manchester and in New York, and the firm's headquarters had transferred from Liverpool to London, where they remain to this day.
On his arrival in Shanghai, John Swire had been struck by the potential for steam shipping on the Yangtze River - then the West's only key to trade with China's interior. With the backing of Alfred Holt, and the latter's Clyde shipbuilder, Scotts' Shipbuilding & Engineering Company of Greenock, Swire formed the China Navigation Company (CNCo) - registered in London and with Butterfield & Swire appointed managers in Shanghai. John Swire immediately ordered three Mississippi-style paddle steamers for the new company. But even before these vessels - Peking, Shanghai and Ichang - had arrived in China, he had snapped up the assets of a newly bankrupted line, Union Steam Navigation, which provided valuable waterfront properties along the Yangtze, as well as two steamers. USNCo's veteran Tunsin was thus destined to become the first vessel to sail under the Swire flag in 1873.
Within a year, John Swire had purchased two coasters from Scotts', for a complementary operation which he called the Coast Boats Ownery. This company quickly established a monopoly of the China coast trade in “beancake” - the bean husk residue left after crushing soya beans for oil, which was in demand as a fertiliser in the fruit growing areas of the south. By the time it amalgamated with CNCo in 1883, the CBO had extended its charter network throughout Southeast Asia and had regular liner services to Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
China Navigation's growing diversity of trades encouraged the firm to expand in a number of new directions. The first of these initiatives began with the purchase of several large blocks of land at Quarry Bay on Hong Kong Island in 1881. Work soon started on the Taikoo Sugar Refinery and the factory was in production by 1883. Inspired by CNCo's growing trade in raw cane sugar from Java, the Philippines and North Queensland, and ready markets in China and Japan, Taikoo Sugar ran the world's largest and most sophisticated plant in its day, and before the turn of the next century had its own small fleet of sugar carrying ships.
It had become increasingly clear that the now sizeable Blue Funnel and China Navigation fleets needed a reliable in-house repair facility in the Far East. Hong Kong, with its magnificent, deep-water harbour provided the ideal setting, and in 1900, on land adjacent to the sugar refinery, construction work began on Taikoo Dockyard. This mammoth ten-year project, largely orchestrated by Scotts' Shipbuilding, (which was by now CNCo's principal builder), was carried out under the leadership of James Henry Scott (1845-1912), who had succeeded John Swire as Senior Partner of the firm, on the latter's death in 1898. A scion of the shipbuilding family, Scott had served the company since Butterfield & Swire's foundation 32 years earlier, and had become John Swire's trusted deput. Taikoo Dockyard launched its first riverboat for CNCo, Shasi, in 1910, and in tandem with Scotts', soon began to produce coasters for the company. The dockyard was to become one of Hong Kong's biggest, and also one of its most progressive employers, providing its own housing, hospital and school.
Meanwhile, the firm had continued to take on agency work for a number of well-known UK principals, and by the mid-1870s, had cut its teeth in the insurance world, representing the forerunners of both Royal Insurance and Guardian Royal Exchange. By 1900, B&S had Shanghai's biggest fire insurance business and a sizeable marine and accident portfolio under the Taikoo mark, and insurance would remain an important side of Swire's business for another 90 years. In the early days, the firm also acted for a number of banks at small coastal ports, and in the 1880s even printed its own “banknotes” - drawn upon the Taikoo Tsng, or Swire Bank - which for a time were common currency in the Swatow (Shantou) area of southern China.
In 1914, John Swire & Sons became a limited company, on the expiration of its original partnership agreement, with John Samuel Swire's elder son John “Jack” (1861-1933) as its first Chairman. The next two decades were to see considerable expansion on the shipping side, under the guidance of Jack and of his younger, half-brother (George) Warren Swire (1883-1949), who took over as Chairman of the company in 1927. By the late 1920s, foreign steam navigation on the inland waterways of China was at its peak, and with the 1930s Depression relatively slow to bite here, the need to maintain a growing fleet of vessels encouraged a new diversification in Shanghai, where Butterfield & Swire opened the Orient Paint, Colour & Varnish factory in 1934.
FORTUNES OF WAR
The Second World War brought Swire's painstakingly constructed empire to its knees. By the cessation of hostilities, the firm's property throughout China lay looted and in ruins and its London office had been gutted in the blitz. CNCo's fleet was scattered and more than 30 of its vessels lost, while in Hong Kong, Taikoo Dockyard and the Taikoo Sugar Refinery had been reduced to rubble by American bombing.
The closure of the Yangtze River to foreign shipping and increasing restrictions on the China coast presaged the firm's gradual withdrawal from Mainland China, following the Revolution of 1949. It was a turning point, but under the chairmanship of Jack Swire's son, John “Jock” Kidston Swire (1893-1983), the company was to emerge from this crisis a leaner and fitter animal. By 1950, Taikoo Sugar was back in production and Taikoo Dockyard had produced its first 6,000-tonner for CNCo.
With Hong Kong as its home port, CNCo now turned its attention south to Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, and a growing network of Pacific Rim services established the pattern for the container liner trades in which the company participates to this day.
In 1952, as a basis for these shipping interests, John Swire & Sons once again became directly active in Australia, where a tentative investment in a small road haulage company proved successful, encouraging the purchase in 1956 of a management stake in freezer trucking company Frigmobile. It was to be the first of a number of investments in cold storage, freezer transport and specialist road haulage, which now count amongst Swire's principal activities in Australia.
Butterfield & Swire had meanwhile set about building up Hong Kong's trade, spearheading the drive with a 1946 joint venture, Swire & Maclaine, which was to lay the foundations for a wide assortment of international marketing franchises in later years. The transfer of its paint factory to Hong Kong in 1948, to premises rented from the rebuilt Taikoo Dockyard, was to be the basis for a growing range of specialised industries, which today include everything from paint to the manufacture of aluminium cans and waste handling services.
THE BIRTH OF AN AIRLINE
Jock Swire was determined to turn the firm in new directions. Recognising that air transport was the key to the future in the post war world, he eagerly scouted for airline agency work for Butterfield & Swire and from 1947, channelled part of Taikoo Dockyard's rehabilitation energies into developing an aircraft engineering facility at Kai Tak Airfield. By 1950, Pacific Air Maintenance Services (PAMAS) had merged with the rival Jardine Air Maintenance Co. and had evolved into the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO) - today a world-renowned facility.
In 1948, Jock Swire persuaded his directors to expend yet more of the firm's greatly depleted capital on another air venture: a 45% shareholding in Cathay Pacific Airways. The airline had been formed just two years earlier by an American-Australian partnership, Roy Farrell and Sydney de Kantzow, who had met while flying cargo-laden C47s over “the Hump” - the famous wartime supply route across the Himalayas from India into China. Beginning with Betsy, a US Amy surplus DC3 (Dakota), purchased by Roy, in two years they had enlarged their fleet to six DC3s and a Catalina flying boat.
By 1948, however, Roy and Syd were in trouble. In need of cash to revamp their shoestring operation, they faced the threat of a hostile local takeover bid, and the possibility that their wings would be clipped by new landing right restrictions on foreign-owned airlines in Hong Kong. It was at this point that Butterfield & Swire stepped into the picture to take a controlling interest in the little company, and the growth of Hong Kong's airline was to become Jock Swire's special pride.
In 1959, Cathay Pacific acquired its first turboprop aircraft - the Lockheed L188 Electra. It was a milestone year in which Cathay simultaneously gained northbound traffic rights to Japan and southbound rights into Sydney. Now a truly regional carrier, the airline entered the jet-age with the arrival of its first Convair-880M in 1962.
NEW FIELDS OF ENTERPRISE
In 1965, Swire purchased Hong Kong Bottlers Federal Inc., an American-owned business that held the franchise to bottle Coca-Cola in Hong Kong. At that time, Hong Kong Bottlers' output was 104 million bottles annually. By 1974, when the company was renamed Swire Bottlers, output was up to 180 million bottles a year, and the company ranked amongst the top 50 Coke bottlers in the world. Today, Swire is one of the largest bottlers of Coca-Cola in Asia and the USA.
The 1970s was to be a decade of immense change for Swire. In the early `70s, the decision was taken to close Taikoo Dockyard, which in the age of containerised shipping had outgrown its Hong Kong Island site. In 1972, Taikoo amalgamated with Hong Kong's oldest dockyard, Hongkong & Whampoa, to form Hongkong United Dockyards (HUD), based at Tsing Yi Island, and at the same time the two companies' tug fleets were merged to form Hongkong Salvage & Towage. Swire was already involved in the development of Hong Kong's new international container port at Kwai Chung, and in the same year, acquired a shareholding in the pioneering container handling facility, Modern Terminals.
Taikoo Dockyard & Engineering Company, which had been publicly quoted on the Hong Kong stock market since 1959, was now renamed Swire Pacific Limited - a ready-made holding company for Swire's Hong Kong-based interests. Signalling the birth of the modern Swire group of companies, it also marked the final laying-to-rest of Butterfield's long-forgotten interest in the firm, and his name was replaced in a general “all change” by a wider use of the Swire name for companies within the group.
By 1972, Taikoo Sugar had also closed down its refinery, to concentrate on sugar products and packaging and in the mid-1970s, a newly formed development and management company, Swire Properties, began to create a new urban landscape from the vast acreage jointly released by the dockyard and refinery in Hong Kong's Island East area. Hong Kong's first private residential estate, Taikoo Shing and the retail/office complex Cityplaza (its underground car park formed from the old Taikoo graving dock), were the first of a number of prestigious commercial projects developed and managed by Swire Properties - including Pacific Place, TaiKoo Place and Festival Walk - redefining the commercial focus of Hong Kong.
The addition to the Cathay Pacific fleet of its first long-range B707 aircraft in 1973 ushered in a decade of full-throttle expansion, as the airline rapidly upgraded through a series of wide-bodied L1011 TriStars and acquired its first B747-200 “jumbo jet” in 1979. The following year, Cathay Pacific became an international airline when it flew non-stop to London for the first time.
The revolutionary changes of the 1970s included other new departures for Swire, notably, the formation of offshore oil support company, Swire Pacific Offshore, (then known as Swire Northern Offshore) in 1975, and the acquisition of a shareholding in Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl) by Swire Pacific. Meanwhile, John Swire & Sons made its own foray into the offshore oil industry with the acquisition in 1979 of the specialist provider of North Sea transport equipment, Swire EPD, (later to become a company of John Swire & Sons Limited, under the name Swire Oilfield Services Limited). John Swire & Sons also entered the specialist road transport and materials handling business in Australia, with the purchase of Transwest Haulage in 1971, and acquired shareholdings in Papua New Guinea trading house Steamships Trading, and Glasgow-based tea trader, James Finlay.
The end of the decade heralded Swire's first investments in the USA, where Swire Properties acquired real estate interests in Miami and Swire Pacific obtained its first Coca-Cola bottling franchise at Salt Lake City. In 1982, freezer warehousing company United States Cold Storage became a wholly-owned subsidiary of John Swire & Sons - a development that was soon to be echoed in Australia, where cold storage provider W. Woodmason, a JS&S associate since 1970, became a wholly-owned subsidiary in 1988. John Swire & Sons Pty's growing stake in the cold storage market would be further increased by the acquisition of South Australian Cold Stores five years later.
The 1980s also saw John Swire & Sons begin to invest in the pastoral sector in Australia, where in 1983, the company acquired 50% of Clyde Agriculture, in conjunction with associate James Finlay. Since then, Clyde, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of JS&S, has expanded from its cotton farming base, to include wool and beef grazing properties, and with the purchase of substantial pastoral holdings through the 1980s and 1990s, is now a major commercial landowner in New South Wales and Southern Queensland.
In Hong Kong, Swire Pacific continued to grow its trading businesses, acquiring the Marathon Sports chain in 1983 and the franchise for Reebok sports and casual shoes in 1987. The same year would see Swire take its first steps in what was to become an important new field of operations: environmental services and waste handling. First in partnership with Browning Ferris Industries and later with SITA International, Swire was to become a major waste handling contractor to the Hong Kong Government, operating a number of landfill sites and waste transfer services - notably from Hong Kong's outlying islands, utilising a number of mini-container vessels designed and operated by Swire associate, Hongkong Salvage & Towage.
From the 1980s, Swire also began to re-invest in Mainland China, frequently in conjunction with The China International Trust & Investment Corporation (CITIC) - a major shareholder in Cathay Pacific since 1987. Concentrating on beverages and manufacturing, these businesses gave Swire a firm footing in China's modern industrial sector.
The trend continued into the 1990s, with the establishment by HAECO of a new joint venture aircraft heavy maintenance facility Taikoo (Xiamen) Aircraft Engineering Company - TAECO - at Xiamen, in southern China. By the end of 1994, Swire Pacific had signed joint venture agreements for paint manufacturing, brewing and sugar refining in Mainland China, while Swire's trading activities on the Mainland now included the marketing of a range of branded sports shoes, including Reebok and Rockport.
The 1990s included significant advancements for Swire's aviation interests. In 1990, Swire Pacific and Cathay Pacific acquired shareholdings in regional Hong Kong airline Dragonair, and in 1994, Cathay Pacific bought a management stake in another Hong Kong carrier, the all-cargo airline Air Hong Kong. In 1995, HAECO and Rolls-Royce plc formed a new joint venture, HAESL, to take on HAECO's engine overhaul business, and a year later, Cathay Pacific commenced services to New York.
In 1999, Swire Pacific expanded its automotive trading interests with the acquisition of exclusive dealerships in Taiwan for Volkswagen and Kia - some 20 years after subsidiary Cannon Taiwan had acquired the Volvo franchise in Taiwan. By 2002, Taikoo Motors Offshore had increased its share in Taiwan's luxury car segment with the acquisition of an exclusive Audi franchise.
The turn of the 21st Century would also see some significant additions to the international portfolio of UK-based parent company, John Swire & Sons Limited. In 1994, the company added to its growing expertise in the Australian specialist road transport market with the purchase of Kalari Transport. In 1996, JS&S built on its longstanding presence in Papua New Guinea with the acquisition of a majority shareholding in the major Highlands-based trading group, Collins & Leahy, which has interests in aviation, trading, manufacturing, hotels, trucking and agriculture in PNG. And since Collins & Leahy held a 33% interest in Steamships Trading, this acquisition increased Swire's stake in Steamships - which had stood at 33.3% since the mid-1980s - to a 51% beneficial shareholding. In 2000, Collins & Leahy became a wholly-owned subsidiary of JS&S and the company's shareholding in the Steamships group, which now includes industrial, trading, marine, property, hotel, manufacturing and trucking interests, increased to 67%. Also in 2000, JS&S increased its shareholding in long-term associate, James Finlay plc, to 100%, on the occasion of the well-known tea producer's 250th birthday.
In November 2002, John Swire & Sons Pty Limited acquired the majority of the cold storage and distribution assets of P. Cleland Enterprises Limited. The acquisition is the single largest investment to date made by Swire in Australia and has significantly increased Swire's capacity in the Australian cold storage market, as well as adding major new distribution contracts, paving the way for the merging of Swire's three major Australian companies in this industry under the umbrella brand Swire Cold Storage in 2004.
Meanwhile, Swire Pacific's investments in Mainland China have also continued to grow in the first decade of the 21st century. In 2002, leading Hong Kong developer, Swire Properties signed a joint venture agreement with the Guangzhou Daily News Group, to develop and manage a four million square foot complex in the upmarket Tianhe district of Guangzhou, scheduled for completion in 2008, and to be known as the Taikoo Hui Guangzhou Cultural Plaza. On the aviation side, TAECO has continued to expand its capacity and the range of services it offers at Xiamen's Gaoqi International Airport, and in 2003, Swire Pacific formed a new company in partnership with China Eastern Airlines subsidiary, Shanghai Eastern Airlines Investment Company, to explore opportunities for investment in airport management and related services on the Mainland. At the end of the same year, Cathay Pacific recommenced services to Beijing, restoring a service originally inaugurated in 1986, but later taken over by associate, Dragonair. Following closely on the heels of the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between the SAR and Mainland governments in 2003, the return of Hong Kong's international carrier to Mainland China will undoubtedly strengthen Hong Kong's economy and help affirm its links with the Mainland.
Swire today employs more than 135,000 people worldwide, but despite its diverse and international focus, John Swire & Sons is still very much a family concern: the current Honorary and Life Presidents are great-great-grandsons of the founder, John Swire of Liverpool.
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