Our Vision
To safeguard the impeccable reputation built over the years whilst making life meaningful to all stakeholders as a responsible Corporate Entity.

Our Mission
To maintain the same uncompromising commitment to the highest standards of business ethics that have sustained the good name of the Company and to become the preferred supplier of all products and services to a demanding clientele through service excellence and professionalism, achieving in the process, growth in a manner that is both socially responsible and benefi cial to our valued customers and employees.

Our History since 1835
George Steuart & Co. Ltd., one of the oldest mercantile establishments in the world and the oldest business house in Sri Lanka can proudly claim to be heirs to a tradition of unblemished excellence in business, spanning over a century-and-ahalf of economic development in our island nation.

The Company was founded in 1835 by James Steuart, an intrepid and high-principled sea captain, who sailed the southern ocean at the beginning of the 19th century. In the course of a voyage to Ceylon, as it was known then, he recognized the immense potential for economic development and commerce in this country.

In 1835, James Steuart, with his brothers Joseph and George, set themselves up in Ceylon as Merchant Bankers operating on a modest scale. The fi rm gradually grew from its original business into an Agency House. There was clear nexus between the original merchant banking and the Company’s new operations as an Agency House. Soon George Steuart & Co. Ltd. made Ceylon a large-scale producer of coffee.

The major coffee blight of the 1870s wiped out Ceylon’s coffee production altogether, but proved to be no more than a temporary setback for the Company; in the ensuing decade it bounced back into the mainstream of business as tea replaced coffee as the country’s leading export.

George Steuart & Co. Ltd. was incorporated and became a Limited Liability Company in 1954. The Head Offi ce building, owned by the Company, was developed to make way for a new high-rise building - Steuart House - in the heart of the Colombo’s business and fi nancial district.

The Company overcame yet another severe setback nearly a hundred years later when, in 1975, the overnight nationalization of plantations put it out of business at a time when it was managing the largest acreage of tea plantations in the island.

Undeterred, the Company prudently moved into a number of other fi elds of business selected to ensure its survival while catering to the growing needs of the country. Its efforts have met with unqualifi ed success and today the Group boasts of subsidiaries which are themselves leaders in their own right, in fi elds covering the export of tea, the distribution of pharmaceuticals, travel and ticketing, airline representation (General Sales Agent for airlines), property development, the assembly of telephones and other electronic products, freight forwarding, insurance and higher education. Not the least of them is its venture into the recruitment of Sri Lankan professionals for reputed principals overseas.