Swire Group

The Swire Group is a diversified conglomerate, headquartered in Swire House in the City of Westminster, London. It controls a large range of wholly owned businesses, including deep-sea shipping, cold storage, road transport, and agricultural activities, along with energy and oil businesses and investments. Swire controls a large property empire in Asia - mainly Hong Kong. The current chairman is Barnaby Swire. Taikoo (太古) is the Chinese name of Swire. It serves as the brand name for businesses such as Taikoo Cube Sugar and Taikoo Shing. Swire Groups' Current Market Cap is approximately 52.2 billion USD.

History

The Swire Group's privately owned parent company is John Swire & Sons Limited. The Swire Group, started by John Swire (1793–1847), had its beginnings as a modest Liverpool import-export company started in the early years of the 19th century. In 1861, John Swire & Sons Limited began to trade with China through agents Augustine Heard & Co. In 1866, in partnership with R.S. Butterfield, Butterfield & Swire was established in Shanghai. Four years later, a Hong Kong branch of Butterfield & Swire was also opened.

The China Navigation Company

The China Navigation Company Limited (CNCo) is a merchant shipping company based in Singapore. It is part of the Swire group, formerly John Swire and Sons.

CNCo was founded by John Samuel Swire to offer paddle steamer services on the Yangtze River. By the early 1870s John Samuel Swire was convinced that there was an opening for increased steam shipping on the Yangtze River and as he was unable to interest other shipping companies, such as Alfred Holt and Company in undertaking this expansion he decided to establish a new company for this. The China Navigation Company was formed in London in 1872 with a capital of £360,000 chiefly put up by John Samuel Swire and WH Swire with Alfred Holt, Rathbone's, TH Ismay, RN Dale, John Scott, T Barlow and William Imrie and T&J Harrison supplying additional money.

History

Beginnings

John Swire and Sons (JS&S) initially ordered three ships to be built for the Lower Yangtze trade and in 1873 purchased the Union Steam Navigation Company giving CNCo two ships and the leases on property in Shanghai and at other river ports. By the mid-1870s CNCo interests had spread to the Canton River trade and by the late 1870s to the Shanghai to Ningpo and Shanghai to Tientsin routes, despite periods of intense competition and rates wars as well as pool agreements with the other shipping companies on these routes. In 1883 the CBO, which had been formed to handle local coastal trade was fused with the CNCo and in the 1880s and 1890s the CNCo expanded its fleet and the ports of call so that by 1894 it consisted of twenty-nine ships calling at ports along the Yangtze, down the South China coast, in the Philippines, South East Asia, Australia, Japan, Russia and the North China coast.