The Limacol brand name has been a tradition in Guyana and around the world since its Guyanese developer, J. A. Adamson (later nicknamed Johnny “Limacol” Adamson) was employed as chief pharmacist, chemist, general manager and managing director at what was then known as Bookers Drug Store in British Guiana in the early 1900s.
According to Alvin O. Thompson writing in “Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Guyana 1580 – 1803” (1987) Adamson developed Limacol “after some months of experimenting”, when he needed to find a substitute for bay rum, which was expensive, and was asked to develop a less expensive lotion that could be used instead of eau de cologne.
The result was the “creation and introduction of the lotion ‘lime rum’ ”, which would become so popular that Bookers, who named it Limacol, registered it as a trademark to protect the creator, the product and its market, as cheap imitations started appearing.
The result of Adamson’s experiments is, according to its current manufacturer, a “unique combination of alcohol and blended aromatic oils, with a lime fragrance” whose “proprietary formula [is] sourced from the Amazon and beyond”.
Adamson’s Limacol formula began selling across the Caribbean, and, by the 1930s was on sale in Britain. Close to a century later, Limacol remains a household name throughout Guyana, the Caribbean, and the West Indian diaspora.
By the late 1930s, with the introduction of Limacol and Ferrol, the latter also a well-known cough and cold elixir in which JA Adamson was also involved, Bookers Drug Store was on its way to becoming the Caribbean region’s oldest and largest pharmaceutical company, and its Limacol brand a Guyanese tradition.
But it almost never happened. Events affecting its company would place the Limacol brand into hard times before it would survive to continue its tradition in Guyana and the Caribbean.
Under the umbrella of the Bookers Group of Companies, a firm with interests in the colony’s sugar, rum, shipping and many other industries at the time, Bookers Drug Store had opened in the 1920s at the corner of Church and Main streets, Georgetown, with the aim of manufacturing and distributing pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs.
Within a decade of their Limacol introduction, Bookers Drug Store’s manufacturing and retail site was razed in the 1945 “Great Fire of Georgetown”, and much activity reduced or suspended for a period.
After a spate of temporary locations and – according to an autobiography of Wilfred A. Gilkes, who was hired by Adamson in the 1930s and managed the company’s Bourda branch – a period of hardship for employees, Bookers eventually rebuilt on its original site as Bookers Universal Store, and relocated the manufacturing section to La Penitence, then considered just outside the city, where it continued producing the Limacol brand as Bookers Manufacturing Drug Company Limited (BMDCL).
When the Limacol manufacturing company was nationalised in the 1970s, it was renamed, and fell behind in its services. It would take privatisation of the Limacol company to put the brand on more solid ground, when a new company was formed to ensure its continued production.
Today, Limacol has added to its international recognition after being awarded the Caribbean Premier League cricket competition franchise under its well-established flagship brand.
