Williams & Kettle Limited with headquarters in Napier, New Zealand, owned a stock and station agency business and a general merchants business with branches throughout the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. Incorporated as a co-operative in 1891, it had been founded in 1885 by landowner and businessman Frederic Williams (1854–1940) with (1854–1940), a brother-in-law of John Roberts the local principal of Dunedin's Murray Roberts and a former Murray Roberts & Co employee.