Murray Roberts & Co
Date of birth
1905
Date of death
Circa 1965
Biography
A Poverty Bay branch was set up in 1905. For the first ten years all the business was in merchandising. There were some meat exports, but little wool was handled. With the advent of the First World War the quantity of wool handled rose abruptly, in part because of the bulk buying contracts. The branch also won a fat stock agency with meat export company Thos Borthwick & Sons. They were provided with an Overland car and a Humber motorcycle. A horse and buggy was retained. A postwar slump in 1920 reduced activity and business did not recover during the 1920s or in the following Great Depression. Recovery did begin in 1937 and the early 1950s was a period of prosperity.
Murray Roberts & Co Limited owned a stock and station agency in New Zealand. For a time, it was New Zealand's largest wool exporter. Its business began in Green Island, Dunedin as a fellmongery owned by the Melbourne partners. Under direction of young John Roberts from 1867, it made very substantial investments in rural property in Otago and Hawke's Bay and spread as a stock and station agency through Otago and Southland and the lower half of the North Island.
Ownership was transferred to a newly incorporated limited liability company in 1910. Until then it had been owned by a complicated network of partners with its core in Scotland, England, and Dunedin. Additional different subsidiary partnerships in different regions were set up to include local management.
Murray Roberts & Co Limited was purchased in 1961 by another Dunedin-based business, London-listed company, National Mortgage and Agency Company of New Zealand. Becoming fully integrated with the operations of National Mortgage it lost most of its separate identity in 1963 though some operations continued until 1965.
accessed 23/06/2022 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Roberts_%26_Co
Murray Roberts & Co Limited owned a stock and station agency in New Zealand. For a time, it was New Zealand's largest wool exporter. Its business began in Green Island, Dunedin as a fellmongery owned by the Melbourne partners. Under direction of young John Roberts from 1867, it made very substantial investments in rural property in Otago and Hawke's Bay and spread as a stock and station agency through Otago and Southland and the lower half of the North Island.
Ownership was transferred to a newly incorporated limited liability company in 1910. Until then it had been owned by a complicated network of partners with its core in Scotland, England, and Dunedin. Additional different subsidiary partnerships in different regions were set up to include local management.
Murray Roberts & Co Limited was purchased in 1961 by another Dunedin-based business, London-listed company, National Mortgage and Agency Company of New Zealand. Becoming fully integrated with the operations of National Mortgage it lost most of its separate identity in 1963 though some operations continued until 1965.
accessed 23/06/2022 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Roberts_%26_Co