The founder of the Group, John Swire, was born in Halifax in 1793. The son of a cloth merchant, he came from a long line of Yorkshire landowners who had become involved in the texile industry in teh 18th century.
By the early 1800s, Yorkshire's wool trade had fallen into decline; so, the young John Swire left Halifax to try his luck in general trade in Licerpool. In 1816, he set up a small company there that took the name John Swire & Sons 35 years later; and on his death in 1847, his two sons, John Samuel and William Hudson, inherited what had by then become a moderately successful concern.
Building on this foundation, the two brothers established an agency in Australia in 1855. They then opened a branch office in Manchester and took shares in several ocean-going trading ships, at which stage the mainstay of their business was the importing of raw cotton from the southern states of America. However, the American Civil War brought an end to that trade ~ whereupon they turned to China, a newly emergent marker for textiles, and a source of such valuable imports as tea and silk.
After experiencing aseries of problems with their agents in the Far East, the two brothers took matters into their own hands in 1866 by forming a financial partnership with Richard Shackleton Butterfield, a fellow Yorkshireman, for whom John Swure & Sons had been engaged to export woollen goods to China.
Later that same year, the senior partner, John Samuel Swire, visited Shanghai and on 4th December, the advertisement reproduced at the beginning of this programme appeared there in the Northe China Daily News.
The new firm commenced business on !st January 1867, adopting the Chinese hong name of " Taikoo" （太古）, meaning "great and ancient", by which it is still widely known throughout the Far East.
North China Daily News, 4th December 1866
Although the partnership with Butterfield was dissolved in 1868, John Swire & Sons cintinued to trade as Butterfield & Swire (B&S) in Asia until 1974, when its Far Eastern operations finally assumed the parent company's name.
One of the first agencies acquired by B&S was for Alfred Holt's Ocean Steam Ship Company of Liverpool (the Blue Funnel Line), to which John Swire & Sons had been an initial subscriber in 1865.
By 1868, B&S had established an office in Yokohama, Japan, and had opened a branch office in New York in 1873 under the name of Swire Bros. John Swire & Sons had meanwhile transferred its head office from Liverpool to London. Then, in 1870, B&S established the Hong Kong 'house' that was eventually to become the centre of John Swire & Sons' activities in the Far East.
Two years later, in 1872, John Swire & Sons registered The China Navigation Company Limited (CNCo), in London, with additional capital from Alfred Holt & Company and the Clydeside shipbuilders, Scotts' of Greenock.
CNCo operated initially on the Yangtze River; in fact, the first vessel to sail under its flag was the paddle-steamer Tunsin which left Shanghai on its maiden voyage to Habkow in April 1873. Now, in total contrast, the company is the major shipping arm of the Swire Group, with a sizable deep-sea fleet engaged in container, bulk and tanker services worldwide.
During the last two decades of the 19th century and well into the 1900s, B&S steadily strengthened its ties with China. Then came World War II and, before those ties could be re-established, the proclamation in 1949 of the People's Republic of China.
Substantial international trade with China resumed only in the late 1970s, John Swire & Sons (China) Ltd. was incorporated five years later, and now has a resident office in Beijing which undertakes liaison, co-ordination, negotiations and research in China on behalf of Swire Group companies. In addition, Swire Pacific Ltd has a China Office in Hong Kong and representative offices in Guangzhou and Shanghai.
On the aviation side, Dragonair, in which Swire Pacific has a significant equity stake and which it manages, operates to 11 destinations in China. CITIC Pacific is the major shareholder in Dragonair and also owns a 12.5% of Cathay Pacific.
Source: Taikoo Swire Group's brochure
