Sir William Roberts, the founder of the Company came to the Indian subcontinent in 1906 and joined the Indian Agriculture Service. He was appointed the First Professor of the famous Punjab Agriculture College Lyallpur (now the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad) in 1909. After the First World War vast area of Punjab became cultivable on completion of one of the largest canal irrigation systems
in the world. Seeing the potential, he took over the assignment to introduce American Upland Cotton in place of the “Desi” cotton variety and entered into a partnership with the British Cotton Growing Association, Manchester (which pioneered cotton growing in Sudan) and took on a lease 7221 acres of land near Khanewal. BCGA continued Farming and Cotton Ginning business till partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Thereafter farming and ginning businesses were bifurcated and BCGA exclusively became a Farming entity and Sir William Roberts formed his own company in 1949 and named it Roberts Cotton Associates Ltd to focus on Cotton Ginning. Sir William Roberts retired in 1966 and died in Bangor, North Wales, in 1971. J. Roberts, is the Managing Director of the Company.
