Olivo & Bakirgian

The textile merchant company Olivo & Bakirgian was established in 1881, when Bedros, Nazareth and Zachariah Bakirgian joined Marco Olivo in the business he had founded in 1849. The Bakirgian family was Armenian, and played a central role in the Armenian community in Manchester. Olivo & Bakirgian initially had offices in Manchester and Smyrna. Marco Bakirgian took over management of the company in 1910, and took British Citizenship the same year. During the First World War, trading expanded to South America, Egypt, India, Russia and China. The Bakirgians had family links in Chile which enabled their commercial interests to expand into Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. The company temporarily withdrew from Smyrna in 1922, following the uprisings in Turkey, but resumed trading there during the 1930s. In 1923, the company purchased a mill in north Lancashire which operated 525 textile looms. In 1924, the company expanded its trading to include Australia. In 1927, the subsidiary company Collins (Manufacturers) Limited was formed to supply the home trade market. In 1928, another subsidiary company, Northern Sudan Estates Limited, purchased a 3,000 acre cotton plantation near Atbara in Sudan. The company ceased trading in 1985.