BOH Plantations Sdn Bhd (

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

BOH) is the largest

black tea Black tea (also literally translated as red tea from various East Asian languages) is a type of tea that is more tea processing, oxidized than oolong, yellow tea, yellow, white tea, white, and green tea, green teas. Black tea is generally st ...

manufacturer in Malaysia, with both domestic and international distribution. The BOH tea plantation, which is located in

Cameron Highlands The Cameron Highlands () is a district in Pahang, Malaysia, occupying an area of . To the north, its boundary touches that of Kelantan; to the west, it shares part of its border with Perak. Situated at the northwestern tip of Pahang, Cameron Hi ...

, Pahang, is also the largest tea plantation in the country. BOH Plantations was founded in 1929 by J. A. Russell, a British-born businessman, during the British colonial era in Malaya. Russell arrived in

Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...

at age seven, in 1890; the country's primary export at the time was

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

. Prior to BOH, Russell had worked in the

Straits Trading Company The Straits Trading Company Limited is a Singapore-based corporation with operations in Singapore and Malaysia, as well as various localities in Asia and Australia. Founded in 1887, the company was the result of a partnership for tin smelting bet ...

, learning to speak several

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

dialects (along with Malay) and making connections with wealthy Chinese tin miners. Besides investing in tin, Russell and his brothers (Philip, Donald, and Robert) put money in the nascent rubber industry in 1908. J. A. and Philip also invested in railway-related construction, including the new Kuala Lumpur railway station. In 1913, Russell purchased almost a third of the real estate in the town of

Ipoh Ipoh (, ) is the capital city of the Malaysian States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Perak. Located on the Kinta River, it is nearly north of Kuala Lumpur and southeast of George Town, Penang, George Town in neighbouring Penang ...

. He and Donald (a mining engineer from the

Colorado School of Mines The Colorado School of Mines (Mines) is a public research university in Golden, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1874, the school offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, science, and mathematics, with a focus on ener ...

) founded a

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extra ...

Batu Arang Batu Arang is a town in Gombak District, Selangor, Malaysia, that is located about from the capital Kuala Lumpur. Coal was first discovered in the region in 1908, when British authorities found large deposits of coal reserves that could be comm ...

, Selangor, around 25 kilometres from the capital.

History

Despite the worldwide

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

at the time BOH was founded in 1929, Russell was optimistic about the tea plantation business, due to steady demand. He was granted a land

concession Concession may refer to: General * Concession (contract) (sometimes called a concession agreement), a contractual right to carry on a certain kind of business or activity in an area, such as to explore or develop its natural resources or to opera ...

(together with veteran tea planter A.B. Milne from

Ceylon Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

) for the first BOH tea garden in Habu. At the time, the land was undeveloped jungle terrain, on steep slopes; with a

steamroller A steamroller (or steam roller) is a form of road roller – a type of heavy construction machinery used for leveling surfaces, such as roads or airfields – that is powered by a steam engine. The leveling/flattening action is achieved through ...

and

mule The mule is a domestic equine hybrid between a donkey, and a horse. It is the offspring of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The horse and the donkey are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes; of the two ...

teams, the stepped plantation was created. As of 2016, BOH Plantations owned four tea gardens: in Habu, Fairlie Tea Garden, Sungai Palas Tea Garden, and Bukit Cheeding in Selangor. There is a packaging factory near the main garden, and the company offers tours. Together, these four plantations total about 1,200

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...

s of land and produce about 4 million kg of tea every year, accounting for about 70% of Malaysian tea output.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:BOH Plantations Tea companies of Malaysia

Plantations Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tobacco ...

Agriculture companies established in 1929 Food and drink companies established in 1929 1929 establishments in British Malaya Privately held companies of Malaysia

History

See also

References

External links