Scales Corporation was founded by George Herbert Scales and is one of New Zealand's oldest companies having operated since 1897. It began life as a protest movement when a group pf central New Zealand sheep farmers formed a Freight Reduction Committee to challenge the freight rates being charged by the large British shipping lines. When their agreement with a Dunedin firm collapsed, Walter Buchanan, Hugh Williams and their supporters sought help from George Scales.
Geo.H.Scales sympathised with them. As an auctioneer, insurance broker and Secretary to the Wellington Agricultural and Pastoral Association, he knew the concerms of the farmers of the region. Soon he was chartering sailing ships for the Freight Reduction Committee against fierce competition from the established Lines. In 1912 the venture became a private company with its unusual articles of association confining shareholdings to sheep farmers (Geo.H.Scales being the sole exception).
Scales ran his company on a shoestring. He did most of the travelling himself, loading the ships with all the wool the shareholders could provide, filling any empty space with wool from outside sources, or timber, coal, grain or feed shipped on his own account.
After Geo.H.Scales died in 1928 the company bearing his name and his private company Geo.H.Scales Pacific, continued to share modest offices in Wellington ‘Scales' chartered three wool ships a year while ‘Pacific' handled insurance, coal agency and stevedoring work.
As new European companies entered the conference system from the late 1950s onwards, the British ‘share' in the wool trade, in which Scales participated began to contract. Scales' participation in that trade ended abruptly in 1977 when the British Lines, juggling quotas to admit the new Shipping Corporation of New Zealand, tore up their agreement with the company. This left Scales with only modest agency business.
This dramatic loss of its core business again obliged Scales to seek new opportunities. During the 1980s it participated in several shipping ventures. When some went badly a complete restucturing of the company took place in 1988-89 at the end of which Chairman David Parsons reported "Scales under way again, bloodied but unbowed".
Since then Scales has successfully responded to many market and business challenges by adapting and identifying new business opportunities which have allowed it to continue to evolve and expand its operations.
The history of Scales Corporation could be said to serve as a history of New Zealand business. No national or global event in the past 100 years has left the company untouched, and yet Scales Corporation has not only survived but thrived through it all.
Looking to the future Scales Corporation possesses the knowledge, experience and expertise to navigate what economic storms may come its way.
Thus the present diversified Corporation while vastly larger than Geo.H.Scales' little office in 1897 remains committed to shipping, trading, cold storage and transport businesses.