Business View Caribbean - January 2016 51
Berger died in 1814 and his two sons, John and Samuel
took over the running of the color works at Homerton,
the company’s East London base of operations. John
died around 1860 and Capel Burrow Berger and Lewis
Curwood Berger, John’s two sons, ran the business,
while making considerable extensions to the Homer-
ton facility. By 1870, Berger Paints was selling 19 dif-
ferent pigments and in 1879, the firm incorporated as
Lewis Berger and Sons. Unfortunately, the first Lewis’
great-grandson, Arthur John Berger, who was tasked
with running the company, mismanaged it into near in-
solvency and, in 1904, the Sherwin Williams Company
bought control of it for a third of its book value.
Meanwhile, in 1923, another small paint company,
Hadfield’s (India) Limited, opened in Calcutta. It was
acquired by British Paints, an international consortium
of paint manufacturing companies, in 1947. In 1969,
British Paints was acquired, in turn, by the merged
company of Berger, Jenson & Nicholson, which had
joined forces in 1960. In 1983, the Indian company
officially changed its name to Berger Paints India, Lim-
ited.
The companies that are known today as Berger Paints
– Caribbean, began in the 1950s, when paint prod-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Berger Paints Trinidad Limited
WHAT:
Manufacturer and distributor of decora-
tive and industrial paint products
WHERE:
Port of Spain, Trinidad
WEBSITE
:
