Our History

Camellia Plc is an amalgam of numerous once quoted public companies, many of whose histories go back to a time when the East India Company was forced by Parliament, some 150 years ago, to cede its dominant commercial and political influence in India to the British Government. Camellia itself has its origins in the 19th century, its foundation having been a very small quoted company on the London Stock Exchange of approximately £80,000 market value in the early 1960s, called the Sephinjuri Bheel Tea Company Limited (S.B.T.C.). The business started in 1889 with the ownership of a single tea garden in the Cachar District of Bengal in North East India and was to remain as such for 75 years until 1964 when the Garden was sold.

Following the disposal of its Tea Garden, S.B.T.C. was used by its Managing Agents as a base for a widening portfolio of Indian tea company shares and to reflect this change the company’s name was changed to Camellia Investments Limited, Camellia Sinensis being the botanical name for the tea plant. In the years that followed it also commenced building what were to become significant stakes in Alex Lawrie Limited and Walter Duncan & Goodricke Ltd, both major 19th century Tea Managing Agency Houses, Alex Lawrie being the Managing Agents of S.B.T.C. 

Alex Lawrie, second from the left, founded Balmer Lawrie in Calcutta in 1867 and in 1878 established a separate business, Alex Lawrie & Co. in London 

Balmer Lawrie moved to their original office in Calcutta
at 103 Clive Street in 1868.

Charles Goodricke &
Walter Duncan were founders
of major 19th  century
Tea Managing Agency Houses.
The two businesses merged in 1949.

In 1967 Walter Duncan & Goodricke merged with Alex Lawrie, the combined entity bearing the name of Walter Duncan & Goodricke, the larger and somewhat older of the two companies.

Over the next decade with Walter Duncan & Goodricke and numerous tea companies as affiliates, Camellia assiduously expanded its tea interests in the Indian sub-continent and diversified its activities into banking, engineering and metal finishing.

During the monetary and economic crisis of 1976 an initial stake of 29% of Eastern Produce Holdings Limited, later to be re-named Linton Park Plc, was acquired. Over subsequent years and finally in 2005 this fine company consisting largely of interests in numerous tea growing companies in East and Central Africa together with other agricultural and industrial activities became a wholly owned subsidiary of Camellia Plc.

Hobart Place, the London address of Duncan Lawrie Private Bank

In 1990 Walter Duncan & Goodricke and Camellia’s other associated tea interests in India and Bangladesh were merged under the banner of Lawrie Group Plc which in turn became a 71% Camellia subsidiary leaving 29% in public hands and in 1999 rationalisation was carried to its logical conclusion with Camellia acquiring what was then the remaining 15% of Lawrie which it did not already own, thus bringing the Lawrie Group into Camellia as a wholly owned subsidiary. Acquisitions and internal re-organisation continued in a consistent and orderly fashion whilst simultaneously focusing on enhancing the liquidity and financial strength of the Camellia Plc group of companies whose net worth presently exceeds £300 million.

Linton Park in Kent, 
Head Office of Camellia Plc