Legend continues: The great story of MTD Walkers

In an interview with Daily FT, the newly appointed Group Director of MTD Walkers PLC, Dr. Arosha Fernando explained 166 years of the colourful journey of the seventh oldest company in Sri Lanka as well as his vision to take the group to the next level. 

Following are excerpts:

Q: Who founded MTD Walkers PLC?

 MTD Walkers PLC then named as Walker Sons & Company is an engineering firm established in Kandy 166 years ago in 1854 by a Scottish engineer, John Walker.

John Walker started his career in an engineering shop of a large cotton mill in Scotland. In 1842 he signed a contract and travelled to Colombo, then Ceylon to work as an engineer in a company named Wilson Ritchie & Company. Over the next 12 years John Walker worked as an engineer for a number of firms in Ceylon before returning to Scotland in 1854. 

Back in Scotland John Walker met up with William Turner, an engineer whom he had known in Ceylon, who encouraged him to come back to Ceylon to work with his engineering business in Kandy. Once back in Kandy, John Walker founded the firm John Walker & Company which would later become Walker Sons & Company, and rise to prominence as one of the most successful engineering firms in the country.

Q: What were the areas of operations of the company?

 The company was initially established to manufacture machinery for the colony’s rapidly developing coffee industry, and in 1873 to supply machinery to the new tea plantations. Then the business diversified into marine engineering, building and construction.

In 1891 the firm was incorporated as a limited liability company, and also registered on the London Stock Exchange.

Thereafter the company was diversified with a construction arm and was proudly responsible for constructing a number of landmark buildings in Colombo including Galle Face Hotel, Cargills Building, P&O Building, Parliament Building, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building, Times of Ceylon Building, the Grandstand at the Colombo Racecourse, Chartered Bank Building, number of State homes in the city and in the 1950s the Ceylinco House Building.

In 1902 the company established a motor division, importing the first cars, twenty Austins into the country and also installed Sri Lanka’s first passenger lift in the Galle Face Hotel. In 1911 the company installed the country’s first air-conditioning system in a 10-room office in Colombo.

During the Second World War the firm repaired and refitted 167 major warships, 322 minor warships and 1,932 merchant vessels, including the aircraft carriers.

Q: How was the ownership of the company evolved over the years?

 Walker Sons was controlled by the Walker family until the 1970s, when it was sold to the Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate. Then the company was purchased by Kapila Heavy Equipment in 1990.

In 2006 the company was acquired by CML Edwards Construction Ltd. and was restructured to form Walkers CML. In 2009, MTD Capital Berhad, a Malaysian investment holding company, acquired the Walkers Group of companies from Kapila Heavy Equipment, and rebranded the group as MTD Walkers PLC.

Q: How is the current operations and the areas of expertise?

 Currently MTD Walkers PLC has 23 subsidiary companies with a staff strength of over 4,000 people and an asset base of Rs. 50 billion and annual turnover of around Rs. 15 billion. Main subsidiary companies included Walkers Colombo Shipyard, Walkers Trinco Shipyard, Colombo Engineering Services, Walkers CML Properties, Northern Power Company, Colombo Fort Heritage, CML MTD Construction, Walkers Piling, Walkers CML International and Walkers Equipment Ltd.

Q: What is your vision as the new Group Director for the future?

 Having such rich history along with our mobilisation across the country with highest expertise in a number of key areas of engineering as well as infrastructure development, I feel we are well-positioned to continue to be a leading player in the market especially with the country’s development plan of the new government. We will seriously look at feasible joint ventures with trade experts from overseas too in further expanding our strengths.

At the same time, we have already made some plans to aggressively look at the opportunities in a number of selected overseas markets beyond Maldives where we are well-established.