A trading company was founded by two Scotsmen in Kolkata 156 years ago. Today, the company is a public sector enterprise under the Union ministry of petroleum and natural gas.
The long and eventful journey of Balmer Lawrie & Company Limited was shared with a group of visitors who walked around the corridors of the company’s majestic corporate office, opposite Writers’ Building in the heart of Calcutta’s office para, on Friday.
Stephen George Balmer and Alexander Lawrie founded Balmer Lawrie on February 1, 1867. The office shifted from Clive Row to 21 NS Road a few years later. Balmer died in London on May 21, 1867, soon after signing the partnership agreement, the visitors, including consul generals, were told.
A 1,500sqft hall on the first floor of the four-floored building, “an example of Indo-Saracenic architecture”, a Grade I Heritage Structure, has been converted into a gallery. It houses various photographs, posters and pamphlets archived inside glass cascades.
The visitors at the company’s office on Friday
Some of the promotional posters that were shown to the visitors
A representative of Balmer Lawrie and Samrat Chowdhury, of BAUL (Bespoken Architectural and UniqueLegacies of Bengal), which organised the tour, shared delightful anecdotes during the tour.
“The senior employees were European men. Till the early twentieth century, it was mandatory for their prospective brides to be interviewed by the top management. It was a way to check if she would fit into the ethos of this corporation,” said Chowdhury.
The promotional posters were meant to sell, back in the Raj, a sea of items, from railway tickets to Scotch whisky.
One such poster had a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It read: “Jack’s own Jill goes up to the Hill, of Murree or Chakrata; Jack remains, and dies in the plains, and Jill remarries soon after”.
“Sending your wife to the Hills? Let us arrange her rail accommodation,” said the advert by “Anglo-Indian Carrying Co”, whose managing agent was Balmer Lawrie.
Similarly, another pamphlet, dating to “the 1880s”, promoted “Finest Old Scotch Whisky. Laphroag Islay” (sic).
“Balmer Lawrie started as a managing agency trading in various products. Tea and allied products were one of the very first. Then, gradual diversification brought many other items into the ambit of the company,” said Chowdhury.
The walk, billed as a “industrial heritage awareness walk”, was a “peek into nineteenth-century Kolkata.
Balmer Lawrie became a public limited company in 1936 and then a central government enterprise in 1972.
Now, it has business units dealing in industrial packaging, greases and lubricants, chemicals, travel and vacations, logistics infrastructure and logistics services, cold chain and refinery and oil field services.
Friday’s visitors included Italian consul general Gianluca Rubagotti, Andalib Elias, Bangladesh deputy high commissioner and Achaparan Yavaprapas, consul general of Thailand.
Adika Ratna Sekhar, the chairman and managing director, Balmer Lawrie, met the visitors.
