Elders Limited - Founders

Founders

With the fledgling colony of South Australia only three years old, Alexander Lang Elder (1815-1885) arrived in Port Misery (now Port Adelaide) in 1839 aboard the family-owned Minerva to launch a new arm of the Scottish based merchant and shipping business.

Alexander was a member of a Scottish merchant family which had decided there was real potential in the newly founded colony of SA and he was dispatched to both set up business and explore opportunities – particularly in goods that could be returned to Britain for sale, such as wool. Alexander battled for the next few years consolidating the business until the copper boom in the mid-north of South Australia in 1842 turned things around. He branched out as a metal broker and the company never looked back. Alexander’s brothers, William (1813-1882), George (1816-1897) and Thomas (1818-1897) joined Alexander but it was Thomas who stayed on to become an Australian while the other three eventually returned to Scotland and England.

It was Thomas who realized the potential of the pastoral Outback and it was under his encouragement the business imported camels to arrange transport. This unlocked the vast interior of Australia, making it possible to tap into the Great Artesian Basin and the hidden water that made grazing viable. He was laying the foundations of a national business empire that would be built on the back of the sheep but which was funded with cash from the copper boom; cash that enabled him and his peers to acquire huge tracts of land.

Alexander left South Australia in 1853. He settled in London in 1855, and acted as agent for the Adelaide company until 1884, when he and his sons established A. L. Elder & Company. William left soon after Alexander. George left in 1855.

Thomas migrated to Adelaide in 1854 and worked with George for a year. After George departed, he formed Elder, Stirling & Co, a partnership with Edward Stirling, Robert Barr Smith and John Taylor. In 1856 Barr Smith married Thomas Elder's sister Joanna, and on Stirling and Taylor's retirement in 1863, Barr Smith and Thomas Elder formed Elder Smith and Co.

In 1875, with Andrew Tennant, they formed the Adelaide Steamship Company.

In 1888 Elder's Wool & Produce Co. Ltd, (a subsidiary Elder Smith and Company), and Elder Smith and Company were amalgamated, and Peter Waite became chairman of directors of Elder Smith & Co. Ltd, "displaying remarkable ingenuity and initiative". He held this position for 34 years, resigning a few months before his death in 1922.

Elder was knighted in 1878 (KCMG) and made GCMG in 1887. He died at Mount Lofty in 1897.