Who We Are » Our History

» Mainzeal Property and Construction Ltd
» Leather in New Zealand and China
» Shanghai Leather Company. Ltd

Richina Pacific embarked on its current strategic path after the Richina Consortium, a group of prominent North American private investors, acquired a 51% controlling interest in the New Zealand-listed company Mainzeal Group Limited in early 1995. In November 1995, Mainzeal Group Limited announced a takeover to acquire the minority interest in its then 52% controlled publicly listed subsidiary, Mair Astley Holdings Limited. This takeover was successfully completed in April 1996. The combined business took its new name Richina Pacific Limited in September 1996.

•   Mainzeal Property and Construction Ltd

Mainzeal Group Limited traces its history back to 1968, when as a branch of Mainline Corporation Ltd, a publicly listed Australian company; it was the sponsoring partner and manager of the Mainline-Dillingham-Fletcher consortium that secured sole rights to develop seven acres of harbor-front land in downtown Auckland, New Zealand. This provided the base from which Mainline Contractors Pty Limited was established and in 1969, as Mainline Corporation of New Zealand, it became a publicly listed New Zealand company. The name Mainzeal Corporation Ltd was adopted in July 1975.

•   Leather in New Zealand and China

		Mair Astley was one of the oldest and largest New Zealand-listed public companies focused primarily on the New Zealand agricultural sectors. It processed, manufactured and was a major exporter of wool, yarn, semi-processed and finished leather, venison and fishing products. Its Mair Wool business was first incorporated in New Zealand in 1882 and became the largest wool trader in New Zealand in the 1980s. Its Astley semi-processing and finished leather tanning operation traces its roots to 1888. Today, after dispositions and restructuring, only the finished leather tanning operations remain, being one of the world’s largest and most modern tanneries based in Shanghai, China.
		Richina Pacific started the transformation of the Company from a New Zealand domiciled conglomerate of mostly unrelated businesses into a China focused investment company when it invested in, built and opened the Beijing Blue Zoo underwater aquarium in September 1996. In October 1996, RPL opened Shanghai Richina Leather (SRL), a finished leather tannery, in a joint venture with Shanghai Leather Co. Ltd (SLC). At that time, the tannery operations consisted of three unused tannery buildings that employed only a handful of employees. Today, the SRL operations employ over 2,200 people. In October 2004, a fourth state-of-the-art tannery building and a new warehouse were opened.

•   Shanghai Leather Company. Ltd

SLC traces its earliest history to 1903, when its first tannery was established in Shanghai. Over the years and particularly since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a wide range of leather and leather-related businesses were grouped under the SLC umbrella, and in 1996 it officially became a limited liability company under the SLC name. At its peak, SLC was by far the largest and most profitable Chinese State-owned leather company with a number of the then most famous Chinese brand names in shoes, garments, athletic products and luggage. At one time SLC employed over 18,000 people in Shanghai.

Since the market reform of China began in the 1980s, SLC has lost market share to competitors from both new international entrants like SRL and domestic private companies. As part of the recent efforts of the Chinese Government to accelerate the reform of State-owned-enterprises (SOEs), RPL was offered the exclusive opportunity to purchase a controlling equity interest in SLC as a result of RPL’s unfailing commitment to make its SRL joint venture become a tannery of international standing despite great difficulties in the early years