What Is Each Country's Oldest Company?

it's really interesting how so many companies have been around for so long for hundreds or sometimes even over a thousand years single companies which are at times older than entire countries a few days ago i was scrolling on instagram and i came across a really interesting picture pointing out the oldest company in each european country and i thought this would be a good idea for a video so here we are i looked it up and apparently this work also exists for every other continent and so the entire world these maps and graphics are really well done and so i'll do credit to whoever created them which from my understanding were the people over at business financing uk so in this video we're going to take a look at the oldest companies in the world first let's quickly check out which the 10 oldest companies are in the world and then take a look at the world map to see what the oldest company is in each country an important note is that these aren't the first established companies but the oldest ones that are still in business today the article was written last year so there is the chance although unlikely that one or more of these have closed down during the past year the top 10 oldest companies in the entire world are spread across continents areas of work and countries the 10th oldest is the chinese mayu ching restaurant established in 1153 this restaurant serves roasted chicken and is said to be around since the jin dynasty because of this in 2007 over 800 years after its creation maiu ching's roast chicken was named as intangible cultural heritage of the hennan province in china the ninth oldest is the danish monkey mole i'm going to mispronounce all of these by the way a water mill which started its work in 1135 operating in the odense river and also oden city in denmark the mill was originally founded by english benedictine monks who moved to the region at the call of the danish king eric the first through royal control sales expansion and many other events in its history they were able to last until today and nowadays still they produce bread and cake mixes the eighth oldest in the world is the belgian afligam brewery as the name indicates a brewery from 1074. this belgian brewery started operating from an abbey and it was founded by six former knights of the region who had become monks according to the brewery's website the monks lived by the rules of saint benedict which stressed the importance of community water at the time wasn't the best so they started to brew hail for their guests which was safer to drink they faced some troubles in maintaining its operation throughout time the brewery was destroyed in world war ii for instance but thankfully they found a solution and began collaborating with another local producer adapting the ancient recipe to fit modern techniques the seventh oldest is an italian bell foundry pontificia fonderia marinelli whose job at creating bells has existed since 1040. its name comes from the marinelli family who founded it in the kingdom of naples in today's italy in 1924 the foundry was awarded the title of pontifical foundry by the vatican the roman catholic church now accounts for 90 percent of all orders placed for the company and it's interesting because despite being so old with so much history and importance even today it's a somewhat small company two brothers from the original family still own it yearly they tend to produce around 50 bells employing no more than 12 people having produced some iconic bells in italian and world history the foundry produced the bell within the leaning tower of pisa in 1961 they cast a special bell to commemorate the 100th anniversary of italy's founding as a united country and their bells can be found throughout the world in the u.n building in new york city in beijing jerusalem or southern america in ireland we have the sixth oldest with a fantastic name sean's bar which is literally a bar established in the year 900. although it's important to say that apparently architects and historians suggest that the lower two floors of the building were constructed between 1600 and 1725 so much later than 900 a.d but the logic behind the claim is that when renovating the building in the 1970s they found materials inside the walls waddle and wicker which were handed over to the national museum of ireland and dated as being there since the 10th century anti-coins were also found which would therefore make the building and possibly the bar as old as that opening up the top five is the english royal mint from 886 the english and british in general didn't only start using coins in 886 but control of britain's mints alternated as different tribes battled over territory in this year however alfred the great recaptured london and began issuing silver coins bearing his portrait this is therefore seen as the start of the continuous history of the current royal mint a government-owned company which has the job of producing coins for the country the first in this list which differentiates itself from the others by being not a family company but a state one the fourth oldest company in the world is the french equivalent the monet de paris established in 864 and its history is similar to the one we just saw it is a government-owned institution responsible for producing francis coins it was founded in the year 864 with the edict of pistris essentially an order of government issued by charles de bald king of west francia aside from military reforms the edict had political and economic consequences as well and economically besides the prohibition of commerce with military enemies it established the king's control of the mints and regulated the punishment for counterfeiting before this edict nine places in france had the right to produce coins but they were reduced to three in order to be better controlled and i imagine the monet de pahi was one of them or the central company that managed the three locations and today it is the world's fourth oldest company and the oldest continuously running minting institution the third oldest company is the german staff felter of a winery since 862. like i said besides the state ones many of these old historical companies were family companies and staff felt off is one of those a family-run winery distillery and guest house located in the small town of grove in rhineland-palatinate germany just like the belgian brewery it started off in an abbey in the 9th century a.d lands belonging to the carolingian dynasty were donated to the abbey so that they could be worked as a source of income they chose to use them to produce wine and even if perhaps on different lands this wine continues to be produced until today in austria we find the second place on this list like the chinese also a restaurant the saint peter stiffed culinarium established in 803 oddly enough also through an abbey it was within the walls of saint peter's abbey in salzburg austria the claims of it being established in the year 803 are based on the writings of an english scholar al quinn of york who served emperor charlemagne in one of his written works issued in 803 the abbey seller and its spear are apparently praised in a poem based on this and other claims the culinarium is perhaps the oldest existing restaurant in the world many historical figures like christopher columbus or mozart are said to have been served there and the oldest existing company in the world is the japanese congo gumi existing since 578 a big lead on other historical companies on this list headquartered in osaka kongo gumi was a family-owned construction company it traced its origins to 578 ad when prince shortuku invited three experts to japan to build a buddhist temple as part of a massive national project led by this prince who was apparently devoted to the religion the company still has a 3 meter long scroll tracing back 40 family generations to the company starts as with many distinguished japanese families sons-in-law often joined the clan and took the congo family name this allowed the company to continue with the same name even when there were no suns in a generation to become the heirs this way through the years a lion has continued either through a son or daughter another factor for the company's longevity is the buddhist temple construction business which according to their history has been a reliable source of income due to the millions of people that follow this faith at the start of the century they employed around 100 people and still specialized in building buddhist temples the company went into liquidation in january of 2006 due to financial difficulties and was purchased by the takamatsu construction group essentially it still exists but after almost 1500 years it seems to no longer be owned by the same family now let's take a look at the entire world i obviously can't go country by country because of how long it would take so this will just be a general overview at each continent where i point out a couple of cases and provide a general perspective if you're particularly interested in a specific continence historic companies let me know in the comments and i can make a dedicated video for them like the oldest companies in europe where i go more in depth on each of them there so now although only with a general overview let's start in europe the color code on the top left allows us to have a faster interpretation of which places have older companies the oldest in the continent is as we saw the austrian restaurant but there are other significantly old companies that don't make it into the top ten any of the ones in the blue and green have been around since very early on and even the ones in red are at least 250 years old older than some countries entirely like the usa there are a few of them in the yellow meaning their oldest companies are somewhat more recent and these are seemingly exclusive to the balkans cyprus armenia hungary belarus and iceland the ones in the red were founded between 1500 and 1749 there aren't many of these we have the portuguese mail in 1520 the norwegian mail in 1647 a croatian shipyard a finnish ironwork or the bank of scotland there is a clear dominance of breweries all around the ones identified with a little mug the icons seem to always be indicatives of the type of business it is i mean i count over 10 ancient european breweries then we have the banks and mints and then other specific types of businesses like the mailing services of portugal and norway the ryaptique in estonia which is a pharmacy apparently an arsenal in bulgaria a salt plant in ukraine a cafe in greece or baths in turkey we can also take a look at this map with a sector color code yellow is primary sector natural resources red is secondary manufacturing and processing blue tertiary services and distribution and green quaternary knowledge and information necessarily being extremely old most of these are in the secondary sector depicted in red only four are in the primary in ukraine and poland salt plants denmark the watermill we saw in spain i think sheep farming then we have a few in the blue like the mailing services or the turkish semberlitas amami baths and only estonia's pharmacy is in the green knowledge sector let's move to north america where necessarily since the countries are younger the oldest companies are more recent in general the oldest though is la casa de moneda de mexico from 1534 established by the spanish viceroy antonio de mendoza through a decree from the spanish crown to create the first mint in the americas the remaining oldest companies in north and central america plus the caribbean are a bit more diverse than in europe you still have mints banks and breweries but there are more areas of business in these ancient companies like the hudson bay company in canada an english royal charter company since 1670 it functioned as the de facto government in parts of north america for nearly 200 years until they sold the land to canada in 1869 at its peak the company controlled the fur trade throughout much of british north america eventually evolving into a mercantile business selling a wide variety of products in shops the first step towards the department stores the company owns today or the shirley plantation in the u.s an estate located in virginia which grew tobacco to be shipped around the colonies and to england and other diverse examples like cuba's airline the national railroad of honduras or a newspaper in dominica here we can notice differences in sector 2. there's a somewhat equal divide between tertiary and secondary with only the us's oldest company being in the business of natural resources going south in south america the oldest is again a mint the casa nacional de moneda in peru mints are also the oldest companies in brazil and colombia while banks occupy this place in bolivia and argentina guyana is the only with a brewery from 1840 and uruguay has a cafe ironically called cafe brazilero in chile the oldest company is far mai an army factory and workshop and in venezuela it is the hacienda chuao which from my understanding started as a colonial cacao plantation again a balanced division between secondary and tertiary businesses moving to asia its size makes it so that variety is normal from a watch factory in russia to a cotton company in afghanistan a chemical plant in the uae an arsenal in indonesia a power company in laos for the wadia group in india which began as a company which built ships and docks in bombay in 1736 in asia the oldest companies are from japan and china the ones we saw in the top 10 and the only two in blue india and russia follow in the red and then the rest have their oldest companies in the yellow category meaning they were founded somewhere between 1750 and 1999. at this point we understand that most of the oldest companies throughout the world a tendency confirmed in asia belong to the secondary or tertiary sectors red or blue in these secondary maps manufacturing or services respectively the only two to deal with natural resources in asia seem to be the kazakhstan bogati coal mine or afghanistan's cotton company in africa all of them are from the same category at least the ones the article had information on the vast majority seem to be banks radio and television companies or mail services especially others have trained companies slash railways or airlines and a couple branch out into different areas like mining restaurants breweries or factories like south africa's premier fmcg which began as a food manufacturer the oldest seems to be the mauritius post their mail service from 1772 almost all of them are in the blue tertiary sector here with three in the red in south africa tanzania and eritrea two in the primary sector the botswana meat commission and the alco mines in guinea chad and cameroon are in the green although i don't know why since afghanistan's cotton company was in the primary sector but perhaps these have more to do with natural sustainability of these resources and not so much as extracting them for production finally in oceania we don't have much data to look at the oldest is australia's post from 1809 followed by the bank of new zealand in 861 and then the european trust company in 1991. all of them therefore being in the blue tertiary sector of services and distribution most of the world was at one point or another partly colonized by the europeans so it makes sense that arriving and seizing the local power and resources they established their own companies during those colonial times which in some cases even if eventually transferring to local people lasts until today any endeavors that previously existed were likely interrupted or closed due to the arrival of europeans and they are taking over of the territories i think that's why we see the oldest continuous companies concentrated in europe with america africa and a big part of asia having their oldest companies founded in more recent times so that was a look at the 10 oldest companies in the world and a quick overview at what each country's oldest company is like i mentioned besides that top 10 i didn't really get into a lot of detail regarding other countries only picking and choosing a couple in each continent to point out and quickly mention if this is something you guys are interested in and the video has a good response i can totally make dedicated videos for each continent in which i explore a larger number of each of their old companies maybe choosing the top 10 or 15 oldest of each continent and going further into their history and activity like i did here for the worldwide top 10. so leave a comment if that's something you want to see it's really interesting how so many companies have been around for so long for hundreds or sometimes even over a thousand years single companies which are at times older than entire countries sometimes maintaining their area of activity and expertise throughout time sometimes having to adapt and expand their services some emerging as essential services for a country like mints banks or mail services others from specific groups like the many breweries or wineries that came from abbeys and monasteries and so many more from simple family businesses that in some cases made their way generation after generation to the same family today once again full credit to whoever made these fantastic maps that we got to see and through them learn about the world's oldest companies from my understanding they come from business financing uk and if so they did a fantastic job making these thanks so much for watching this video subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 610,335

Rating: 4.8989978 out of 5

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: p5vY7c3cDS4

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Lockner01]

HBC is not a Canadian Company anymore. I don't think there are any stores in the Maritimes anymore and the last time I saw one was in an airport about a year ago.

The company is still around but nobody shops at "The Bay" Anymore.