Some companies are more than businesses. In sixty-five years of profitable operation, Richard Pieris & Co. Ltd. has become an integral part of the local scene, as definitively Sri Lankan as Adam's Peak or the Mahaweli River. Search any home in the land, from the highest to the most humble, and your chances of not finding at least one product manufactured or sold by Richard Pieris are slim indeed. From rubber hosepipe to radial tyres, foam mattresses to furniture, Sri Lanka's consumers turn to us for an almost incredible variety of products. In the process, they have turned the name of our company and the Arpico brand into household words across the country.

The beginnings of this national institution were modest. The founding partners set themselves up in business as ‘commission agents, general import and export merchants and dealers in estate supplies', and by doing so they were actually creating new dimensions for a Ceylonese mercantile community to emerge. In fact, as the rest of the Articles of Association make clear, the primary interest of Richard Pieris, his brother Percy and their fellow-founders Evelyn Fonseka and Walter Rutnam was, at that time, automotive. The company's first business venture was a filling-station. Modest beginnings indeed.

Turnover grew by more than 500 percent in the first seven years. In 1940 the business was converted into a limited-liability company with the founding partners as directors. The issued share capital of Rs. 50,000 was substantial for its day, and the new company boasted 70 employees.

In the following decades, a number of milestones were passed. Public incorporation took place in 1951. Business continued to expand till the company's operations outgrew their cramped Hyde Park Corner premises, and between 1955 and 1957 the centre of operations moved to Nawinna, east of Colombo, where there was room to grow. Progress was steady, and as expansion continued the company acquired an increasingly diversified business portfolio. Meanwhile, the nation as a whole was experiencing bouts of rapid and often uncomfortable social and political change; at such times our company was often a key source of stability and confidence for many of our employees, suppliers and even, in many cases, our customers.

Today, Richard Pieris & Co. Ltd. can justifiably claim a place in the front rank of the country's private business organizations. We are the nation's largest and most diversified exporter of value-added rubber products, a business we pioneered in 1952. Our diversified manufacturing operations-in rubber and plastic products and furniture-combine with our thriving interests in high street retail, plantations and the production and marketing of rebuilt tyres to make our company shares a secure and dependable long-term investment. Our financial results, taken by and large, display consistent, substantial and above all conscionable profitability over six decades. At present in today's contemporary times, we have gradually evolved into being the market leaders in almost every line of merchandise manufactured and distributed by us.