HISTORY

About Us  »  History

 

We were incorporated as a public limited company under the name The Kuala Sidim Rubber Company, Limited, on 4 July 1946 in the Federation of Malaya (Malaya) under the Companies Ordinance 1910. We were at the time involved in the cultivation of rubber and management of rubber plantation estates in Malaya, where our rubber plantations were located in Peninsular Malaya.

In the 1960s, we began converting our rubber crops into oil palm. In July 1969, Barlow Boustead Estates Agency Limited (BBEA), a plantation management agency company, became our substantial shareholder and assumed the role of managing agent for our plantation estates.

We were listed on both Bursa Securities and the Singapore Stock Exchange on 1 August 1973. Also in 1973, we expanded into agricultural research and advisory services through the establishment of Highland Research Unit Sdn Bhd (HRU), a joint venture research unit between Highlands & Lowlands Berhad and Selangor Coconuts Berhad (SCB), which was then our listed plantation-based subsidiary, and us.

Beginning from the late 1970s through the 1980s, we began acquiring landbank, as well as oil palm plantation estates, in Sabah, including from other plantation estate owners for whom BBEA was acting as managing agent. Between February 1982 and May 1982, our current holding company, Boustead Holdings Berhad (BHB), acquired all the interest held in BBEA from BBEA's shareholders, including Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera (LTAT), Lembaga Tabung Haji, FELDA and members of the Barlow family, and renamed it Boustead Estates Agency Sdn Bhd (BEA), after which BEA became a wholly-owned subsidiary of BHB. In May 1983, BHB acquired all of BEA's equity interest in our Company. In the meantime, BEA continued to be the managing agent for all our plantation assets.

In 1986, we co-founded Applied Agricultural Resources Sdn Bhd (AAR) (then known as Applied Agricultural Research Sdn Bhd), also an agricultural research and advisory services unit, in a joint-venture partnership with Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad. In May 1987, we disposed of our entire interest in HRU.

In line with the then national policy of promoting the listing of Malaysian public listed companies on Bursa Securities, we were delisted from the Singapore Stock Exchange effective 1 January 1990.

On 16 July 2013 we initiated the privatisation of AI-Hadharah Boustead REIT (BREIT) to provide an avenue to merge and streamline all of the plantation assets in our Group under one entity, namely us, which will enable us to raise funds and access the equity capital market, as well as provide us greater financial flexibility to pursue further growth opportunities.

As the final step in the streamlining process, we acquired the entire equity interest in BEA from BHB on 1 July 2013, thus consolidating the management nucleus of BHB Group's entire plantation operations under our Group.

The Group was taken private by LTAT and delisted from Bursa Malaysia Main Market on 23 January 2024.