The name ‘shelf company’ refers to the days when the company documents would literally be stored on a shelf ready to be transferred to the new owner. However, in today's electronic world all of the company documents are stored digitally.

The origins of ready made shelf companies stems back to the days when online company formations were not available. All companies were formed manually by post or in person at Companies House. Getting to Cardiff is not convenient for most people and postal applications took 5-10 working days. Therefore to reduce the time it took to get companies to clients, formation agents and accountants kept pre-registered companies on the shelf. This was common practice for many years and is still a way of obtaining a limited company quickly.