Our Story So Far...

Four decades. Three products. Sixty countries. And we're not done yet.

— CHAPTER 1 — THE INCUBATION YEARS: 1984–1991 —

A morning flight and a checkerboard approach.

Picture this: it's 1984, and I'm on an early morning flight to Hong Kong, glued to the window. The iconic skyline, the bustling harbour, the lush hills coming into view. The plane glides over Victoria Harbour and I catch glimpses of the Star Ferry below. Then comes the thrilling checkerboard approach into Kai Tak Airport — a low, banking descent over the rooftops of Kowloon that was genuinely unlike any other landing in the world. The plane touches down and I feel a rush of exhilaration. Welcome to Hong Kong.

Photo: Cathay Pacific landing at Kai Tak — the famous checkerboard approach. Courtesy: Raj Visrolia.

The next morning, we boarded the through train at Kowloon Station — the old Hung Hom terminus — for a three-hour journey to Guangzhou. Today that same journey takes 47 minutes on the High Speed Rail. In 1984, it felt like crossing into another world entirely.

We stayed at the Dong Fang Hotel — one of the very few hotels in Guangzhou where foreigners were permitted to stay in those days. Even Margaret Thatcher had stayed there. Early the following morning, we took a taxi to Liu Er San Road, threading through traditional markets and historic streets to reach our destination: the offices of Kwangtung Native Products Import & Export Corporation — KTNB — my father's longstanding and favourite supplier of Chinese Cassia.

It was only in 1978 that India-China trade had re-opened after the war of 1962. China itself was only just beginning to open. We were, in a very real sense, among the first wave.

Until then, export prices were tightly controlled and barely correlated to domestic market prices. There were only two exporters licensed to export Chinese Cassia — Sikiang Origin, Sailing Boat Brand — and KTNB was one of them. The Canton Fair, held twice a year for 30 days at a stretch, accounted for nearly half of all China's trade in those years.

The atmosphere at the Fair was unlike anything that exists today. Buyers from India, Pakistan, Singapore, the UK, the USA — all staying at the same hotel, all circling the same products, all trading fragments of market intelligence over meals. The vegetarian options in those days amounted to onion cake, tomato soup, green salad, and vegetable curry with steamed rice — and that was on a good day. We made do, and we talked. No mobile phones. No internet. Just conversation, intuition, and relationship.

Photo: FEC — Foreign Exchange Certificate — the only legal tender for foreigners in China during the 1980s

Photo: Vijay Dubey, Nilesh Dattani and Mr. Patak of Patak Pickles UK at the Canton Fair fountain, late 1980s,

Photo: and Mr. Patak and Gopaldas Dattani (Babubhai) enjoying home-made food at Dong Fang Hotel.

Photo: New office building — GDNP at Jiang Nan Road, Guangzhou.

Photo: Traditional Cassia specifications from Guangxi Native I/E Corp.

The years between 1984 and 1991 were our incubation period — learning the rhythms of a market that was changing faster than anyone fully understood. China's gradual decentralisation of export rights, from state monopolies to branches, then sub-branches, then eventually open competition, created both opportunity and risk. We watched carefully, built relationships, and waited for the right moment to make our move.

— CHAPTER 2 — EARLY YEARS: 1992–2000 —

A table, a friend, and floor number four.

In 1992, I moved to Hong Kong permanently and joined China Business Limited — which had been incorporated the previous year. Our first office was not an office at all. It was table space, generously provided by a very kind friend of my father's: Mr. Wong Yee Chat. From that borrowed desk, we began building what CBL would become.

Photo: Mrs. Rupa Dattani with Mr. Wong Yee Chat

The early windfall from a Cassia market fluctuation in those years provided enough capital to buy our own premises — a small 592 square foot office at Lucky Commercial Centre. The unit was on the 4th floor (considered unlucky in Hong Kong), unit number 4 (also unlucky), facing west (not a preferred direction). We bought it anyway. It proved to be very lucky and fruitful to us indeed.

Those early years moved quickly. Sunray Resources Holdings was established in 1995 as an umbrella for what we knew would be a growing family of ventures. The Regency trademark was registered in China in 1996 and Hong Kong in 1999. Our first domain name — regencyworld.com — and first website went live in 1997, at a time when most companies in our industry had never heard of the internet.

First in class — twice.

In 1998, we achieved ISO 9001 certification for Quality Excellence — making us the first Greater China company specialised in spices to hold this certification. HACCP certification followed in 2003. Again, first in our category. These weren't box-ticking exercises. They were the formal expression of standards we had already been applying for years.

[ Photo: ISO 9001 achieved 1997 — Nilesh Dattani with Simon Tse and Kulwant Singh Uppal ]

In 2000, we did something that sounds small but was genuinely significant for the industry: we introduced 25kg carton packaging for Cassia — becoming the first company globally to do so. Until then, Cassia was shipped in heavy 50kg bales bound with bamboo. Buyers had to unbundle them, throw away the bamboo, and absorb the weight loss. Our carton eliminated all of that — cleaner, lighter, more economical, more hygienic. The first lot shipped to SpiceMasters in Sydney, Australia on 5 June 2000.

Photo: Traditional Cassia 50kg bales — the old way.

Photo: Cassia 25kg carton — our innovation, first shipped June 2000.

— CHAPTER 3 — GROWTH AMIDST STRUGGLE: 2000–2015 —

Every crisis taught us something we couldn't have learned otherwise.

The years between 2000 and 2015 brought extraordinary growth — and equally extraordinary disruption. We were jolted, repeatedly, by events that were entirely outside our control:

• 1997 Asian Financial Crisis — currency markets in turmoil, buyers retreating, margins compressed overnight.

• 1997–2003 Sixty consecutive months of deflation in Hong Kong — the longest deflationary period in the city's modern history.

• 2003 SARS — Hong Kong and southern China effectively shut down for months.

• 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis — credit markets froze, buyers cancelled orders, commodity prices swung violently.

Each of these events was painful. Each one also taught us something: new methods of cost control, better systems for managing supply chain risk, sharper instincts for which supplier relationships would hold under pressure and which would not. We came out of each crisis leaner and more capable than we went in.

During this period we also expanded our product range substantially — sometimes deliberately, sometimes because an opportunity presented itself and we had the relationships to pursue it. At various points our scope included Hibiscus, Chillies, Dates, Sugar Candy, Agar Agar, Dehydrated Garlic, Onion, Canned Fruits and Vegetables, Chinese Tea, Edible Seeds, Sweet Paprika, Dehydrated Fruit, Peanut Butter, Herbs, and Walnuts — among others.

Photo: Rock sugar, brown candy, lump sugar — part of the broader product range.

Photo: Dehydrated onion, garlic, paprika.

Photo: HACCP achieved 2003 .

We also moved offices — from the lucky 4th floor to larger self-owned premises at Qualipak Tower on Connaught Road West, where CBL remains today. The growing team needed space. The business had outgrown its origins.

Sixty consecutive months of deflation. SARS. The financial crisis. We didn't just survive them — we used them. Each one sharpened us.

— CHAPTER 4 — CONSOLIDATION AND SPECIALISATION: 2015–2022 —

Deliberately smaller. Genuinely stronger.

From around 2017, the trading environment shifted again — this time more structurally. Higher tariffs. Then freight rates that, during the pandemic years, at times exceeded the FOB value of the goods being shipped. The economics of broad-based commodity trading became increasingly difficult to justify.

We made a deliberate choice: to concentrate. To do fewer things, better, with more control and more accountability. Some lines were wound down responsibly. Canned goods, which had been a significant business, fell victim to freight economics that made them unviable. Non-China trade was given up when Covid-19 restrictions made pre-shipment inspections impossible to conduct safely.

What remained — and what we invested in further — were the three product areas where our knowledge, relationships, and quality control capabilities were deepest: Cassia/Cinnamon, Agar Agar, and Dehydrated Garlic. For both Agar Agar and Dehydrated Garlic, we established owned and partnered production and processing arrangements — not primarily to reduce costs, but to tighten quality control and ensure we could fulfil contracts on time and to specification regardless of what the broader market was doing.

Other product lines — Dates, Edible Seeds, Herbs, Nuts — were handed over to Regency Spices Ltd, the fourth-generation venture founded by Sunit Dattani in 2014, where they could be developed and managed with focused attention and fresh energy.

Photo: Agar Agar packing facility

Photo: Garlic flakes selection and quality control.

— CHAPTER 5 — WHERE WE ARE NOW: 2022 ONWARDS —

The next chapter — and why it makes sense.

Today, China Business Limited brings together over 40 years of active experience across trade, manufacturing, joint ventures, and export operations — spanning more than 60 countries and tens of thousands of containers. That history is not decoration. It is the foundation of what we now offer as a specialist broker and agent.

The transition to brokerage and agency is not a retreat. It is the natural evolution of a business that has been on every side of the supply chain and now knows exactly where it can add the most value — for buyers who need quality assurance and market knowledge they cannot replicate themselves, and suppliers who need a representative with genuine credibility and decades of proven relationships.

We have been traders, manufacturers, principals, and exporters. We've paid for quality failures out of our own pocket and fixed them. We've made the hard calls. Now we put all of that experience to work for you.

The story isn't finished. But this chapter — focused, specialist, honest about what we are and what we aren't — may well be the most useful one we've written yet.