Leading palm oil company Sime Darby Plantation (SD Plantation) has proposed changing its name to SD Guthrie.
In a statement on the company’s website on 30 April, the group said it would seek shareholders’ approval for the new name at an extraordinary general meeting (EGM), the date of which would be issued in due course.
“This is a significant milestone in our 200-year history,” SD Plantation chairman Nik Norzrul Thani said.
The company said the decision to rebrand was made after several months of discussions with experts in the fields of law, intellectual property and brand identity.
“We believe it is the prerogative of any large company with ambitions for sustainable growth, to own and control its brand and identity. With this change to SD Guthrie, we will be able to assert full control over our identity and explore opportunities that will best serve the interests of our shareholders,” SD Plantation group managing director Mohamad Helmy Othman Basha said.
The “Sime Darby” brand is owned and controlled by Sime Darby Berhad, the former parent company of SD Plantation. Since the demerger and listing of SD Plantation six-and-a-half years ago, it has operated under a licence, subject to the terms of a brand and trademark licensing agreement, paying an annual fee for the use of the “Sime Darby” brand.
This situation had imposed significant constraints on SD Plantation’s ability to make its own strategic decisions for the brand and business, the company said.
In proposing “SD Guthrie” as the new brand, the company said it aimed to present itself as a fully integrated player in the industry, with interests and potential beyond upstream plantations.
Additionally, it said the brand SD Guthrie was a central part of SD Plantation’s history, referencing both its recent past as part of the Sime Darby group and its origins more than 200 years ago with Alexander Guthrie, who founded Guthrie & Co, which started out as a trading house in Singapore in 1821.
Since then, following multiple corporate changes, it had grown into one of the largest plantation companies in the world.
