WELCOME TRADING CO. PTE. LTD.
The House that Jack Built, 1971
Family house · Singapore · Est. 1971
Our word is our most important asset. We are straightforward with our clients. What we promise, we deliver.
Word Made Good
In 1971, the name “Welcome” was an invitation. Over five decades, the firm has weathered oil shocks, financial crises, market openings and the arrival of digital trade.
What remained constant was the Lim family rule: practical sense, honest communication, and relationships that survive every cycle.
Our Story
The Chinese name for the Hakka means guest families. Ours came from Meizhou, in the hills of eastern Guangdong, and early in the last century they took a ship south, as several hundred thousand others did. We do not know what they did when they landed. Almost certainly manual labour, because that was what there was.
What they were able to leave their children was not capital. It was a name. In a region with no credit bureau and no contract worth enforcing, goods moved on the strength of a man’s name, and that is how a labourer’s son could become a trader inside one generation.
In 1971 Jack Lim registered a commodities company in Singapore and called it Welcome Trading. The name was an invitation. There was nothing unusual about the venture: the city was full of small trading firms started by men in exactly his position, on borrowed money and a clean name. Most of them are gone.
The trade has always called a firm a house, and the word is well chosen. He built his in an era of handwritten letters and ocean voyages, one relationship at a time, and each one cost a voyage. It came through 1973, 1985, 1997, 2003, 2008 and 2020, each of which ended houses larger than ours. The difference was rarely brilliance. Usually it was whether the word held in a bad year.
His two sons carry it now: CW Lim in natural rubber, the commodity Chinese commerce in this region was built on, and CL Lim in metals and steel. The trade has changed and so have we, from moving goods to adding value along the chain. The door has not moved.
Read our storyThen / Now
Our Commodities
From rubber plantations to tyre factories, from smelters to processors, Welcome connects origin markets with the enterprises that turn raw materials into infrastructure and mobility.
01
Natural Rubber
SMR, SIR, SVR, CSR, MSR and selected blended grades, sourced across Asia, available palletised or in bulk containers.
Serving tyre factories, mixers and traders across China, India, Malaysia and other regional markets.
02
Tyre ecosystem
Welcome works with both major end-users and specialised rubber packers to match grades and specifications to every buyer.
Custom compounding and blend recipes can be developed with selected packers at origin.
03
Non-ferrous metals
Aluminium billets, bars, coils, plates, foil and scrap, plus SHG and PW zinc ingots, die-cast zinc, refined and recycled lead.
Sourced from both LME-registered warrants and producers directly across Asia and the Indian subcontinent.Welcome serves enterprises across China, India, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, with particular depth in China and Vietnam.
How We Work
Whether by email, WhatsApp or WeChat, we never answer in haste. Every promise is weighed before it is made.
Decades in China and Vietnam give us first-hand understanding of relationships, logistics and specifications.
Experience and insight are passed on deliberately; clients can expect continuity, not reinvention each generation.
People
A close father-and-son team, combining the founder’s long view with leadership across two commodity families: metals and natural rubber.
Managing Director · Founder
Jack Lim was born in Malaya in 1935, the son of Hakka immigrants. Long before he had his own company, he was selling goods as far afield as Fiji and the Solomon Islands. In 1971 he registered Welcome Trading in Singapore, and led it for over fifty years.
His phone number, 65 9637 6666, remains in service today, retained by the company as its official WhatsApp and WeChat account.
In His Own Hand →Executive Director · Metals
CL Lim entered the trade in 1991 and left almost immediately for Vietnam, where he transacted business by countertrade and barter before local banking and foreign-exchange mechanisms existed. In 1992 he established the firm’s first representative office there, and today heads the metals business.
Executive Director · Natural Rubber
CW Lim heads the natural rubber business, sourcing from Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia — the old Nanyang.
Contact Us
Whether you source natural rubber or non-ferrous metals, or are looking for a long-term trading partner who knows the region, this is where the conversation begins.
wtc@welcome.com.sg