Who We Are & Our Story

Four generations in the spice trade. Thirty-five years in China. And a very deliberate decision about what comes next.

Food business is in our blood.

China Business Limited is a family business — and we mean that in the oldest, most literal sense. The Dattani family has been in the spice trade for four generations, starting with Dayalji Purshottam Dattani who left India to build a trading business from scratch, passing the craft to his son Gopaldas — known to everyone as Babu — who expanded its reach across international markets.

The third generation brought China into the picture. Nilesh Dattani founded China Business Limited in Hong Kong in 1991, establishing the company's roots in Chinese food ingredients and building direct relationships with producers on the mainland. His son Sunit has since taken that foundation further, founding Regency Spices Ltd in 2014 as a separate but connected venture focused on fine foods.

When your grandfather traded spices and your father sourced from China, the knowledge isn't just in the files — it's in the conversation at the dinner table.

That depth of family knowledge — four generations of understanding how spice markets work, how quality is judged, how supplier relationships are built and when they break — is not something any new entrant to this industry can replicate. It is, quietly, one of CBL's most significant advantages.

Thirty-five years of building — in China and Hong Kong.

CBL didn't start as a broker. We started as traders and then became principals — people with real skin in the game, real factories, real liability, and real consequences when things went wrong. That history matters because it shapes everything we do today.

• 1991 China Business Ltd. established in Hong Kong. Trading in cassia/cinnamon, agar agar and dehydrated garlic begins.

• 1995 First owned processing factory established in China — Sunray Foods Co. Ltd., focused on raisins processing.

• 1996 Cassia processing factory established — Sunray Native Products Co. Ltd.

• 2012 Garlic processing factory established — Orient Richland Food Co. Ltd., Shandong Province.

• 2014 Regency Spices Ltd. established in Hong Kong — a new venture by the fourth generation, scaling into fine foods and new markets.

• 2026 China Business Ltd. transitions to specialist brokerage and agency — applying three decades of principal experience to representing buyers.

At peak operations, CBL and its associated companies operated factories in Shandong and Fujian provinces, supplied to over 50 markets across six continents, and managed the full chain from raw material sourcing through to processing, packaging, export documentation and delivery.

We know what a production line looks like from the inside. We know which corners factories are tempted to cut when margins are tight. We know what a specification says versus what actually gets packed — because we've been the ones writing the specification, managing the packing, and answering for it when it wasn't right.

We've been on both sides of a quality complaint.

Operating as a principal supplier across multiple product lines and factory arrangements — owned, joint venture, sub-contracted, associated — means we have experienced quality failures firsthand. Not as observers. As the party responsible for fixing them.

Over the years, that has meant making decisions that cost money but were simply the right thing to do: dropping entire product lines that couldn't be controlled to our standards, blacklisting suppliers who substituted or adulterated, compensating buyers when our product fell short, and on occasion, managing product recalls.

We didn't build our current verification standards in a boardroom. We built them because we know what happens when they're absent — and we've paid the price of finding out.

None of that history is something we broadcast as a badge of honour. But it is something we believe a serious buyer deserves to know. The brokers and agents who have never had skin in the game — who have never faced a recall, never compensated a customer, never had to decide whether to honour a contract at a loss — haven't been tested the way we have.

That testing is precisely why we can make the commitments we now make on quality, quantity, time, and price with genuine confidence. Not because we've never faced difficulty, but because we have — and we know how to prevent it.

The operational reality.

The shift from principal trader to broker and agent is not something that happened to CBL. It is a decision we made, deliberately, and for reasons we're happy to explain openly.

Running factories and principal trading operations requires a level of administrative infrastructure — accounting, compliance, staffing, record keeping — that grows with the complexity of the business. After 35 years, and with the fourth generation building their own ventures, consolidating CBL into a leaner, more focused brokerage model is both practical and honest about where the business's strengths now lie.

The market reality.

Margins in direct trading have compressed significantly. The buyers who made principal supply viable — mid-sized importers who needed a full-service supplier — are either consolidating upwards into companies who extract maximum value from suppliers at minimum margin, or downwards into pure commodity trading, where price is everything and there's no room for the kind of quality oversight we insist on.

CBL has never been — and has no interest in becoming — either of those things. We are not set up to work for a multinational that expects suppliers to derive their profit from the prestige of the relationship rather than from fair payment. And we are not a pass-through trader adding a margin without adding value.

Where we genuinely add value — and who we work best with.

The clients we serve best are importers and distributors who fall into one of two categories:

• Those who want to add new products, explore new origins, or expand their range — and need a trusted partner with existing relationships and market knowledge to do it safely and efficiently.

• Those who cannot control quality independently — either because they lack the technical knowledge or the on-the-ground presence in China to verify what they're actually buying.

Quality in our product categories is not just taste, aroma, and appearance — what the industry calls external quality. It includes internal quality: volatile oil content in cassia, allicin levels in garlic, gel strength in agar agar. It includes regulatory quality: pesticide residues, heavy metals, microbial counts, ETO contamination, allergen declarations. And it includes documented quality: whether the certifications and lab reports accompanying a shipment are accurate, current, and actually relevant to your specification.

Controlling all four layers simultaneously — external, internal, regulatory, and documented — requires knowledge that takes decades to build. That is what CBL brings to a brokerage relationship. Not just connections. Knowledge.

Verified, certified, and established.

CBL maintains current certifications and memberships appropriate to its role as a food ingredients broker and agent operating from Hong Kong.

• ISO 22000:2018 — Food Safety Management System (current, 2024)

• GS1 Hong Kong Member — Global standards for product identification (current, 2025)

• Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce — Member since 1995

• Hong Kong Food Council — Member since 2003

• Certificate of Incorporation — Hong Kong registered company

Copies of current certificates are available on request. For compliance-sensitive enquiries, please include your specific certification requirements in your initial message. Send a Compliance Enquiry.

50+ markets. One base. Deep focus.

Over the course of CBL's history as a trader and principal, the group has supplied customers in over 50 countries across Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Our primary focus for brokerage services is the UK and European market, where food safety regulations, labelling requirements, and supply chain transparency expectations align most closely with the quality standards we apply.

We operate from Hong Kong — which gives us direct access to mainland Chinese suppliers, favourable logistics infrastructure, and a legal and regulatory environment that provides genuine buyer protection. Our China factory contacts in Shandong and Fujian provinces remain active working relationships built over decades.

The buyers we work with best are the ones who ask hard questions before they place an order. If you want to understand our process, our fees, our factory relationships, or how we'd approach sourcing your specific requirement — we welcome that conversation.

No obligation. No sales pitch. Just a straight, honest discussion about whether we can genuinely help you.

Dayalji Dattani

Gopaldas Dattani (Babubhai)

Nilesh Dattani

Sunit Dattani