The records of the South Australian Company deposited with the State Library of South Australia, Archival collections (BRG 42 or Business Record Group 42) provide historians and researchers with a useful perspective of the early development of an Australian colonial economy. Besides making a significant contribution to the founding and fashioning of the new settlement of South Australia, the South Australian Company continued to play and important part in the commercial affairs of Adelaide and its surrounding regions for more than a century.

The volume of material contained in the record group is quite substantial, comprising some fifty major series of records which occupy close to nineteen metres of repository shelving. Most of the papers were deposited in the Archival collections in 1937-1938 and came from both the London and Adelaide offices of the company. The collection contains some 150 maps of company lands in South Australia.