FROM its beginnings as a shipping operator between Adelaide and Melbourne in 1875, it took more than a century for Adelaide Steamship to reach its peak in the 1980s as one of corporate Australia’s high-flyers.
It soon became one of our largest corporate collapses.
In its early years Adsteam became one of the nation’s largest coastal shipping companies. Then it entered the towage industry in 1890 and later, shipbuilding. The decline in coastal shipping from the 1950s led Adsteam to rely more on towage and eventually pushed it to look for new areas of business.