Private company

Aitken Spence

Sri Lankan conglomerate

Aitken Spence PLC (Sinhala: එයිට්කින් ස්පෙන්ස්; Tamil: எய்ட்கின் ஸ்பென்ஸ்) is a Sri Lankan blue chip conglomerate with operations in South Asia, Middle East, Africa and Pacific. Listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange since 1983, it has major interests in hotels, travel, maritime services and logistics. The group also has a significant presence in printing, plantation, power generation, financial services, IT, Business Process Outsourcing/Knowledge Process Outsourcing sector, elevator agency services, garments, and property development.² Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1868Founded¹

Industryleisure industry¹
HeadquartersColombo¹
Websitewww.aitkenspence.com

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Corporate structure

Aitken Spence sits at the top of its group. 5 entities, 1 country on record. Switch between the flow chart and the network, and select any entity to see its details.

Aitken Spence Colombo
- Ace Power Embilipitiya Subsidiary · Sri Lanka
- Ace Power Generation Subsidiary · Sri Lanka
- Ace Wind Power Subsidiary · Sri Lanka
- Western Power Company Subsidiary · Sri Lanka

Built from subsidiaries, stakes and holdings from Wikidata (CC0); major holders from Schedules 13D and 13G. Each entity in the chart links to its source.

The story

Whilst the roots of Aitken Spence can be dated back to Wilson & Archer Partnership of the 1830s in the early British Colonial Ceylon, the company began to take its current form after the signing of a formal partnership agreement between Thomas Clark and Patrick Gordon Spence—Scottish merchants and shipping agents in Galle—on 1 September 1868, wherein Clark Spence & Co. was established. Clark Spence & Co.'s trading segment at this stage included exports of natural vein graphite (plumbago), gems, hides, sappan wood, ebony, coffee, coconut oil, coir, arrack, and citronella oil to the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States and Australia; and imports of Burmese rice, and coal for steamship bunkers.

On 5 April 1871, Patrick Gordon Spence secured Clark Spence & Co. as the sole agent of Lloyd's of London in Ceylon. In order to service the agency for the Lloyd's of London for the Port of Colombo, Clark Spence & Co. partnered with Britton, Aitken & Co. to open a branch office in Colombo. On New Year's Day, 1873, E.C. Britton opted out of the Britton, Aitken & Co. partnership, resulting in Patrick Gordon Spence, Edward Aitken and S.R. Aitken coming together to form Aitken Spence & Co. to manage the operations in Colombo, whilst Clark Spence & Co. continued in partnership to operate in Galle. In 1876, Aitken Spence & Co. obtained the Lloyd's agency from Clark Spence & Co. Aitken Spence had also obtained the local agency of the Morgan Crucible Company for trading in plumbago. As Colombo became the commercial capital of Sri Lanka, Aitken Spence & Co became more prominent and subsequently its partner company, Clark Spence & Co. originally based in Galle, became a subsidiary of Aitken Spence & Co.

By the 1880s, Aitken Spence had also secured the shipping agencies Koninklijke Rotterdamsche Lloyd and Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland for Ceylon. The company moved into plantations sector as an agency house in the early 1900s and with the onset of the Great Depression, began to withdraw from its trading business. In 1918, Aitken Spence purchased the Freudenberg Building in Colombo, and made it its company headquarters having renamed the building the Lloyds Building. As a pioneer in port operations, Aitken Spence was entrusted in coordinating the Operations of Colombo Port during the Second World War.

Aitken Spence became a Private Company in 1952. In its centenary year, 1968, it appointed its first Sri Lankan Chairman, E.L. Van Langenberg. By 1971, as Sri Lanka was preparing to end British dominion and declare itself a republic, the company became a wholly Sri Lankan owned entity. In 1972, it began to offer shares to its executives, thereby broad basing its ownership. The company eventually moved on from this model and in 1983 offered its shares to the general public on the Colombo Stock Exchange with an issued share capital of Rs. 51 million.

During the early 1960s and early 1970s, Insurance and Plantations sectors—which were core business segments of Aitken Spence, where the company had been well established at the time—were nationalized. However, the Group's marine insurance segment (including its Lloyd's Agency) continued to operate as it did not fall within the purview of nationalization.

Despite the setbacks from nationalization, in realizing the then government's thrust to boost tourism, Aitken Spence launched its tourism segment in 1972 with investments in its first hotel (Neptune Hotel in Beruwala, Sri Lanka opened in 1974). The company then entered into Aviation in 1974 (as general sales agent for Singapore Airlines in Sri Lanka). In consolidating its travel agency business that had begun with the launch of Aitken Spence Hotels in 1974, Aitken Spence set up Aitken Spence Travels in 1977 as inbound and outbound tour operators in Sri Lanka and as agents for Eurail and Britrail. Tourism is now a core business segment of Aitken Spence.

With Sri Lanka adopting open market economic policies focused on export led growth in 1977, Aitken Spence forayed further into new business segments: container and allied services in 1979; garments and apparel in 1979; international courier services with TNT in 1981; and elevators in 1989 as agent of the Otis Elevator Company. With the insurance sector being deregulated in the 1980s, the Group played a pivotal role in the resurgence of private sector insurance as a proponent of the National Insurance Corporation and Union Assurance Ltd, stakes in which Aitken Spence subsequently divested. Aitken Spence reentered Plantations sector, when the sector was reprivatized in 1992, through its stake in Udapussellawa Plantation PLC that was later divested.

In response to the Power Crisis in Sri Lanka in 1996, Aitken Spence began to explore investment opportunities in power generation sector, with first two power plants coming online in 2002. The Group also maintained container vessel operations, with acquisition of five ships in a joint venture with Ceyline Group in 2003, which it later divested in 2008. In 2010, in continuing its partnership with Ceyline Group, Aitken Spence invested in CINEC, Sri Lanka's largest private higher education institution. In 2004, Aitken Spence Travels partnered with TUI Group of Germany to form a joint venture that is the largest leisure, travel and tourism company in the world.

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Aitken Spence was the first Sri Lankan resort operator to embark on overseas resort operations having acquired Bathala Island Resort of Maldives in 1993. In 1996, Aitken Spence entered Bangladesh through Aitken Spence Cargo with its shipping services. A decade later, in 2006, Aitken Spence entered the Indian hospitality sector, having secured management contracts for five hotel properties in India. On the same year, the company broke new ground by becoming the first Sri Lankan company to venture into port efficiency management outside of Sri Lanka, when it undertook to improve efficiency of ports in the African continent. The company increased its global presence even further by obtaining the management of four hotel properties in Oman in 2007. In 2013, Aitken Spence announced its proposed venture into Fiji to manage the Ports of Suva and Lautoka in a public private partnership with the Government of Fiji. The Group has expressed interest to further diversify its investments in Fiji, venturing into hospitality, power and printing sectors. Currently, the company has operations in eight countries (Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, India, South Africa, Oman, Fiji and Myanmar), spanning several continents with 13,000 employees.

From Wikipedia’s article on Aitken Spence, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.³

Products and brands

Heritance Tea Factory

Heritance Tea Factory is a concept hotel wherein a 61-year-old dilapidated tea factory has been remodelled and conserved as a hotel. Located in Heathersett Estate (25 acre tea estate), Kandapola in the Nuwara Eliya district, the 5 star resort is considered to be the highest elevated (6,800 ft above sea level) luxury hotel in Sri Lanka. Conceptualized by G. C. Wickremasinghe, a former chairman and current board member of Aitken Spence, and designed by Nihal Bodhinayake, the hotel came to operation in 1996.

Heritance Negombo

Heritance Negombo (formally known as Browns Beach Hotel) was rebranded as Heritance Negombo.

Cargo consolidation and storage facilities

In terms of cargo consolidation, the company offers both local and multi country cargo consolidation. In Sri Lanka, it operates its own container freight station with in-house customs that complies with C-TPAT standards. Aitken Spence Cargo and Courier services provide air freight, ocean freight, supply chain management, brokerage, project cargo management and international and domestic courier as primary services and also specialize in airline cargo GSA representation Aitken Spence Logistics. Aitken Spence Logistics also services shipments of garments through its garments on hanger facilities and quality assurance centre facilities. The company also offers refrigerated storage services in terms of cold rooms and reefer containers to its clients.

With respect to warehousing facilities in Sri Lanka, Aitken Spence operates a central cargo storage complexes with a total floor area exceeding 300,000 sqft, located in Colombo, Wattala, Mabole and Katunayake Zone with a modern fleet of equipment and cargo handling machinery.

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Container handling, repair and modification facilities

The container services arm of Aitken Spence Logistics that processes a container every two minutes is the first company in Sri Lanka to operate its own container depot (first at Mattakkuliya in 1979 and shifted to Mabole in 1989). In addition, Aitken Spence also runs a Lloyd's approved facility for container modification and repair services.

The company provides import and export container handling services, handling transshipment cargo, and the servicing of passenger cruise vessels, car carriers and casual callers.

Freight forwarding, courier services and air cargo

In addition to its own haulage, Aitken Spence also provides freight forwarding through its global partner network. Aitken Spence Cargo, specialized freight-forwarding arm of Aitken Spence, provides air freight, sea freight, brokerage, customs facilitation and supply chain solutions to clients in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives.

Aitken Spence handles cargo sales agencies for Singapore Airlines Cargo, Air Jamaica, My Travels, Qatar Airways Cargo and EVA Air in Sri Lanka. It is also the General Sales Agents (Cargo) for My Travels in Maldives & Bangladesh; Livingston Air in Bangladesh, Singapore and Thailand; Continental Airlines Cargo in Bangladesh, while being the cargo sales agents for SriLankan Airlines Cargo in the Maldives.

Aitken Spence Group represents TNT Express courier services in Sri Lanka and provides both domestic and international courier services. It also represents Spring Global Mail in Sri Lanka.

Maritime services

Aitken Spence offers services in the maritime sector through its maritime wing, Aitken Spence Maritime. Its services include liner agency representation (of G6 Alliance), cruise vessel representation, feeder and casual caller representation, break bulk facilities, and ship servicing and facilitation (crew services, bunkering, repairs, supply of provisions) for ports in Sri Lanka. It also provides ship chartering services.

In January 2005, in a joint venture with Ceyline Holdings, Aitken Spence re-entered the ship owning for time charter business in order to profit from the then shipping boom. In 2007, with the saturation of the ship chartering market, Aitken Spence exited the ship owning business and shifted its strategic focus to expanding its port management business.

In 2007, Aitken Spence in partnership with Port of Singapore Authority submitted a joint bid to build and operate the South Container Terminal of the Colombo Port Expansion Project. When the initial bidding process of Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) stalled and was reactivated, Aitken Spence partnered with China Merchant Holdings International and was the sole bidder in support of the project. In 2010, the bid was approved by SLPA and construction began on the US$450 million project. However, in 2012, citing cost escalations and changes in financing requirements, Aitken Spence sold its stake to CMHI in 2012, realizing a LKR Rs. 630 million capital gain.

Aitken Spence is the first Sri Lankan company to venture into port efficiency improvement, training and container terminal management overseas with its operations in the African continent. As a result of the strategic partnership with the Port of Durban from 2006, Aitken Spence won a "ship planning and mentoring" project covering the Ports of Durban, Cape Town and Ngqura in South Africa in 2010. In 2011, Aitken Spence announced that it has won a deal to improve the efficiency of Port of Nacala in Mozambique. In 2013, Aitken Spence took over the management of two Fijian ports, Suva and Lautoka, with its purchase of 51% of Fiji Ports Terminal Ltd, a 100% owned subsidiary of Fiji Ports Corporation Ltd. The company further consolidated its presence in the Fijian maritime sector in acquiring a 20% stake in Fiji Ports Corporation Ltd. in November 2015.

In 2010, Aitken Spence renewed its alliance with Ceyline Group of Companies when it invested in Colombo International Nautical and Engineering College (CINEC). In 2012, Aitken Spence increased its stake in CINEC from 10% to 40% in a move to further strengthen its maritime portfolio. Located in Malabe, the CINEC Campus is Sri Lanka's largest private higher education institution and also has branches in

Colombo, Trincomalee and Jaffna. CINEC also manages the maritime academies in Fiji and Seychelles. In 2013, further to Aitken Spence's entry into port management in Fiji, Fijian Government announced plans to invite CINEC to manage Fiji National University's maritime school.

Services

In the services sector, Aitken Spence operates in a number of key domains: inbound tourism, outbound travel, airline agencies, conventions and exhibitions, elevator agency, financial services, insurance, business and knowledge process outsourcing and luxury lifestyle solutions.

Destination management

With regards to inbound tourism sector, Aitken Spence Travels – a joint venture with TUI—is the largest destination management company in Sri Lanka representing over 200 international tour operators, and has been recognized with Sri Lanka's Presidential Award for the Best Destination Management Company and leading Destination Management Company at the World Travel Awards in 2017. The outbound travel arm of Aitken Spence Travels is an IATA approved outbound travel agency and has been in operation since 1975, making it one of the oldest IATA agencies in Sri Lanka. In addition to its core business of airline ticketing, it is also the general sales agent for Rail Europe, Inc. and Tradewinds. Aitken Spence Travels is also the representative in Sri Lanka for CWT, a global travel management company. Aitken Spence is also the preferred partner of Emirates Holidays in Sri Lanka. In financial year 2017/2018, Aitken Spence Travels handled over 178,000 tourists to Sri Lanka.

Event management and MICE

Aitken Spence Conventions & Exhibitions is the event management arm of the Aitken Spence PLC and is specialized in organizing Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.Aitken Spence Conventions & Exhibitions The company also represents Pacific World MICE company in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Airline agency

In terms of airline agency services, Aitken Spence acts as the General Sales Agent for Singapore International Airlines in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Aitken Spence is also the General Sales Agent for SriLankan Airlines in Maldives.

Financial services

In the financial services sector, Aitken Spence in a joint venture with Mercantile Merchant Bank, Sri Lanka offers Western Union Money Transfer services in Sri Lanka with a network of over 2000 sub-agent locations countrywide, which includes banks, financial institutions and retail outlets. As an authorized agent for Western Union in Sri Lanka, the Group's money transfer services business has a commanding 65% share of the Western Union business in Sri Lanka.

Aitken Spence serves as survey and claim settling agents for Lloyd's of London since 1876, covering the commercial ports in Sri Lanka and the Republic of Maldives. It also carries out quality surveys and hull and machinery surveys. In addition, Aitken Spence Insurance also acts as survey and claims settling agents for several other reputed insurance companies worldwide including AVIVA, People's Insurance Company of China, Oriental Insurance Co. of India, New India Assurance, Iffco-Tokio of India, Royal & Sun Alliance Group, Northern Marine Underwriters, China Pacific Property Insurance Co. Ltd, Sumitomo Fire & Marine Insurance Co. Ltd., Tokyo Marine & Fire Insurance Co. of Japan, Cesam of France, QBE Insurance of Singapore and American Home Assurance Company since 1949.

Knowledge and information technology

The Group also provides human resources consulting in Sri Lanka and overseas under brand "Genuity".

Aitken Spence Technologies offers IT in, enterprise content management (ECM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), both based on core-Oracle Applications and Technologies, and Application Development based on Open Source/Java technologies. In 2012, Aitken Spence was appointed as Oracle University Education Re-seller Partner and Approved Training Centre. Aitken Spence Technologies is also a member of IBM PartnerWorld program. In October 2013, PlantERM, the Enterprise Resource Management application developed for the first time in Sri Lanka for the plantation sector by Aitken Spence Technologies, received the NBQSA Gold Award in the General Applications category.

Aitken Spence offers financial accounting outsourcing services through its subsidiary Aitken Spence Business Solutions in Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh. The business solutions partners include; Citibank, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank on the electronic banking and Oracle in the ERP solutions.Aitken Spence Business Solutions

Elevator agency

Aitken Spence also provides elevator services acting as the agent for Otis Elevators (part of United Technologies Corporation) in Sri Lanka and the Maldives since 1989.

Plantation services

Aitken Spence has been in the plantations industry from the early 1900s. In 1975, the estates originally owned by Aitken Spence were acquired under the plantation nationalization program. In 1992, with the re-privatization of plantations industry, Aitken Spence reentered the sector in taking over the management of Udapussellawa Plantation PLC. It also invested in a minority stake in Talawakelle Plantations. Aitken Spence later divested its stake in Udapussellawa and Talawakelle Plantations

The management of Elpitiya Plantations PLC was taken over by Aitken Spence in 1997 from Carsons through Aitken Spence Plantations Managements Ltd. The Group currently manages 13 estates (with over 8800 hectares of cultivated land) in Sri Lanka, producing high, mid and low grown teas. From the 13 estates, six estates are located on the up cluster in Kandy and Nuwara Eliya districts (estates: Dunsinane, Sheen, Fernlands, Meddecombra, New Peacock and Nayapane) and seven estates in the low cluster (Deviturai, Talgaswella, Gulugahakanda, Lelwala, Ketandola, Bentota and Elpitiya). These estates conform with multiple standards on sustainability

including ISO 22000 for food safety management system, Rainforest Alliance certification, Ethical Tea Partnership and Forest Stewardship Council certification. In addition to tea, Elpitiya Plantations also produces rubber, coconut, cinnamon and palm oil.

Group has diversified its plantation operations into other areas such as palm oil processing, hydropower development, speciality tea manufacturing and eco-tourism.

The Group also has its own tea brand for black tea and green tea in Sri Lanka under the name "Harrow Ceylon Choice".

In January 2013, Elpitiya Plantations PLC entered a joint venture with Dianhong International Limited, Hong Kong, a subsidiary of Yunnan Dianhong Group Company Limited of China, to grow and process tea in Sri Lanka for Chinese Speciality Tea market.

In April 2013, shares of Aitken Spence Plantation Managements Ltd was introduced to the Colombo Stock Exchange.

Garment manufacturing

Aitken Spence entered the garments manufacturing sector in 1979 with its factory at Mattakkuliya. Currently, Aitken Spence operates two factories in Sri Lanka—in Matugama (opened in 1993 in support of the 200 garment factories initiative of the then Government of Sri Lanka) and at Koggala Export Processing Zone (since 2008)—that manufactures and exports clothing for clients such as The Gap, Inc., Columbia Sportswear, Kohl's and Sears in the US, and Marks & Spencer Work Wear, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose, Boots and Marriot in Europe.

Next Generation Technology Products

In October 2014, Aitken Spence invested in Eco Corp Asia, a company holding the exclusive rights in Sri Lanka to market nanotechnology based liquid glass coating product of Nanopool GmbH. The operation formulates specialized surface protection systems and applications on different materials utilizing nanotechnology; while introducing diverse innovative solutions for industries.