Tate & Lyle

Last updated

Tate & Lyle PLC
Company type Public limited company
Industry Food processing
FoundedMerger of Henry Tate & Sons (established 1859) and Abram Lyle & Sons (established 1887) in 1921
Headquarters London, England, UK
Key people
Products
RevenueIncrease2.svg £1.751 billion (2023) [1]
Increase2.svg £196 million (2023) [1]
Decrease2.svg £190 million (2023) [1]
Number of employees
3,572 (2023) [1]
Website www.tateandlyle.com

Tate & Lyle PLC is a British-headquartered, global supplier of food and beverage products to food and industrial markets. It was originally a sugar refining business, but from the 1970s, it began to diversify, eventually divesting its sugar business in 2010. It specialises in turning raw materials such as corn and tapioca into ingredients that add taste, texture, and nutrients to food and beverages. [2] It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

Contents

History

Sugar refining

Tate & Lyle PLC refinery along the Thames in Silvertown, London 2018 LCY, aerial view of Tate & Lyle, Silvertown (cropped).jpg
Tate & Lyle PLC refinery along the Thames in Silvertown, London

The company was formed in 1921 from a merger of two rival sugar refiners: Henry Tate & Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons. [3]

Henry Tate established his business in 1859, in Liverpool, later expanding to Silvertown in East London. [3] He used his industrial fortune to found the Tate Institute in Silvertown in 1887, and the Tate Gallery in Pimlico, Central London in 1897. He endowed the gallery with his own collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. [4]

Abram Lyle, a cooper and shipowner, acquired an interest in a sugar refinery in 1865, in Greenock and then at Plaistow Wharf, West Silvertown, London. [3] The two companies had large factories nearby each other – Henry Tate in Silvertown and Abram Lyle at Plaistow Wharf – so prompting the merger. Prior to the merger, which occurred after they had died, the two men were bitter business rivals, although they had never met in person. [5] In 1949, the company introduced its "Mr Cube" brand, as part of a marketing campaign to help it fight a proposed nationalisation by the Labour government. [3]

In 1888 Lyle's Golden Syrup introduced a logo of a dead lion surrounded by a swarm of bees, illustrating a biblical story, with the quotation "out of the strong came forth sweetness". [6] The logo, which holds the Guinness World Record for the world's oldest unchanged brand packaging, was kept for most products until 2024, when it was replaced with a lion's head and a single bee. The original logo was maintained for Lyle's Golden Syrup tins. [7]

Diversification

From 1973, British membership of the European Economic Community threatened Tate & Lyle's core business, with quotas imposed from Brussels favouring domestic sugar beet producers over imported cane refiners such as Tate & Lyle. [8] As a result, under the joint leadership of John O. Lyle and Saxon Tate (direct descendants of Abram Lyle and Henry Tate respectively), the company began to diversify into related fields of commodity trading, transport and engineering, and in 1976, it acquired competing cane sugar refiner Manbré & Garton. [8]

In 1976, the Company acquired a 33% stake (increased to 63% in 1988) in Amylum, a European starch-based manufacturing business. [3] The Liverpool sugar plant closed in 1981, and the Greenock plant closed in 1997. [9] In 1988, Tate & Lyle acquired a 90% stake in A. E. Staley, a US corn processing business. In 1998 it brought Haarmann & Reimer, a citric acid producer. In 2000, it acquired the remaining minorities of Amylum and A. E. Staley. [3]

In 2004, it established a joint venture with DuPont to manufacture a renewable 1,3-Propanediol that can be used to make Sorona (a substitute for nylon). This was its first major foray into bio-materials. [3] In 2005, DuPont Tate & Lyle BioProducts was created as a joint venture between DuPont and Tate & Lyle. [10] In 2006, it acquired Hycail, a small Dutch business, giving the company intellectual property and a pilot plant to manufacture Polylactic acid (PLA), another bio-plastic. [11] In October 2007, five European starch and alcohol plants, previously part of the European starch division known as Amylum group, were sold to Syral, a subsidiary of French sugar company Tereos. [12] Syral closed its Greenwich Peninsula plant in London in September 2009, and it was subsequently demolished. [13]

In 2006, Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin was awarded a Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest branding. [14]

Tate & Lyle head office in Kingsway, London Television House 532080694.jpg
Tate & Lyle head office in Kingsway, London

In February 2008, it was announced that Tate & Lyle granulated white cane sugar would be accredited as a Fairtrade product, with all the company's other retail products to follow in 2009. [15]

In April 2009, the United States International Trade Commission affirmed a ruling that Chinese manufacturers can make copycat versions of its Splenda product. [16]

In 2021, Tate & Lyle ranked fourth in the Modified Starch category of FoodTalks' Global Food Thickener Companies list. [17]

In May 2022, it was announced that Tate & Lyle had acquired Nutriati, an ingredient technology company developing and producing chickpea protein and flour. [18]

Disposal of sugar refining business

In July 2010, the company announced the sale of its sugar refining business, including rights to use the Tate & Lyle brand name and Lyle's Golden Syrup, to American Sugar Refining (owned by sugar barons the Fanjul brothers) for £211 million. [19] The sale included the Plaistow Wharf and Silvertown plants. [19] The new owners pledged that there would be no job losses as a result of the transaction. [20]

Recent history

In 2012, HarperCollins published The Sugar Girls , a work of narrative non-fiction based on the true stories of women who worked at Tate & Lyle's two factories in the East End of London from the 1940s to the 1960s. [21]

Nick Hampton became CEO on 1 April 2018, replacing Javed Ahmed, who stepped down from this role and from the board, and retired from the company. [22]

Tate & Lyle has developed a method to commercially produce the natural sweetener allulose. It emerged in August 2019 that the company was seeking to take advantage of the 2019 permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to not list the product in total sugar or as an added sugar in commercial food ingredients. [23]

In July 2021, Tate & Lyle announced it was spinning off Tate & Lyle Primary Products (formerly, A. E. Staley) into a new company to be known as Primary Products Ingredients Americas LLC (Primient). Tate & Lyle will maintain 50% ownership of Primient and the remaining 50% will be owned by KPS Capital Partners (including board and management control). The transaction was completed in April 2022. [24]

In June 2022, it was announced that Tate & Lyle had completed the acquisition of Quantum Hi-Tech (Guangdong) Biological Co., Ltd (Quantum), a prebiotic dietary fibre business located in China. [25]

In January 2023, Tate & Lyle announced a rebrand, including a new logo and typography for all products except Lyle's Golden Syrup (which maintains the original logo, the world's oldest unchanged brand packaging), [7] new imagery and a new narrative: science, solutions, society. [26]

In June 2024, Tate & Lyle announced that the company has signed an agreement to acquire CP Kelco, a provider of pectin and speciality gums, from J.M. Huber, a large US-based family-owned corporation. [27]

Operations

A Tate & Lyle tank car carrying corn syrup Corn syrup tank car.jpg
A Tate & Lyle tank car carrying corn syrup

The company is organised as follows: [28]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sucralose</span> Non-nutritive sweetener

Sucralose is an artificial sweetener and sugar substitute. As the majority of ingested sucralose is not metabolized by the body, it adds very little food energy. In the European Union, it is also known under the E number E955. It is produced by chlorination of sucrose, selectively replacing three of the hydroxy groups—in the C1 and C6 positions of the fructose portion and the C4 position of the glucose portion—to give a 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxyfructose–4-chloro-4-deoxygalactose disaccharide. Sucralose is about 600 times sweeter than sucrose, 3 times as sweet as both aspartame and acesulfame potassium, and 2 times as sweet as sodium saccharin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Splenda</span> Brand of sugar substitute

Splenda is a global brand of sugar substitutes and reduced-calorie food products. While the company is known for its original formulation containing sucralose, it also manufactures items using natural sweeteners such as stevia, monk fruit and allulose. It is owned by the American company Heartland Food Products Group. The high-intensity sweetener ingredient sucralose used in Splenda Original is manufactured by the British company Tate & Lyle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corn syrup</span> Syrup made from corn used as food additive

Corn syrup is a food syrup which is made from the starch of corn/maize and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor. It can be processed into high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) by using the enzyme D-xylose isomerase to convert a large proportion of its glucose into sweeter fructose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golden syrup</span> Thick amber-colored form of inverted sugar syrup

Golden syrup or light treacle is a thick, amber-coloured form of inverted sugar syrup made by the process of refining sugar cane or sugar beet juice into sugar. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance and consistency similar to honey, and is often used as a substitute where honey is unavailable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redpath Sugar</span> Canadian sugar refining company

Redpath Sugar Ltd. is a Canadian sugar refining company that was established in 1854 and the first refining cane sugar in Montreal, Quebec. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company is a subsidiary of the multinational American Sugar Refining.

Primary Products Ingredients Americas LLC, also formerly known as Tate & Lyle Primary Products, is an American company that produces a range of starch products for the food, paper and other industries; high fructose corn syrup; crystalline fructose; and other agro-industrial products. The company was incorporated in 1906 as A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company by Augustus Eugene Staley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psicose</span> Chemical compound

D-Psicose (C6H12O6), also known as D-allulose or simply allulose, is an epimer of fructose that is used by some commercial food and beverage manufacturers as a low-calorie sweetener. Allulose occurs naturally in small quantities in a variety of foods. It was first identified in the 1940s, although the enzymes needed to produce it on an industrial scale were not discovered until the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abram Lyle</span> Sugar refiner and politician

Abram Lyle was a Scottish food manufacturer and politician, who is noted for founding the sugar refiners Abram Lyle & Sons in 1887, which merged with the company of his rival Henry Tate to become Tate & Lyle in 1921.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domino Foods</span> Privately owned sugar company

Domino Foods, Inc. is a privately held sugar marketing and sales company based in Yonkers, New York, United States, that sells products produced by its manufacturing members. DFI distributes sugar to retailers under four brand names across the U.S: Domino,C&H,Florida Crystals, and Redpath. Its namesake product, the Domino Sugar brand name, whose products are generally sold in two-tone packaging with blue labeling text, is the best known. Domino Foods is the largest sugar company in the United States.

Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSHs), also known as polyglycitol syrup, are mixtures of several sugar alcohols. Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates were developed by the Swedish company Lyckeby Starch in the 1960s. The HSH family of polyols is an approved food ingredient in Canada, Japan, and Australia. HSH sweeteners provide 40 to 90% sweetness relative to table sugar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corn Refiners Association</span> American trade association

The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is a trade association based in Washington, D.C. It represents the corn refining industry in the United States. Corn refining encompasses the production of corn starch, corn oil, and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingredion</span> American ingredient manufacturer

Ingredion Inc. is an American food and beverage ingredient provider based in Westchester, Illinois, producing mainly starches, non-GMO sweeteners, stevia, and pea protein. The company turns corn, tapioca, potatoes, plant-based stevia, grains, fruits, gums and other vegetables into ingredients for the food, beverage, brewing, and pharmaceutical industries and numerous industrial sectors. It has about 12,000 employees in 44 locations, and customers in excess of 120 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Sugar Refining</span> Privately held cane sugar refining company

American Sugar Refining, Inc. is a large privately held cane sugar refining company, with a production capacity of 6.5 million tons of sugar. The company produces a full line of consumer, industrial, food service, and specialty sweetener products. In 2013, it adopted the corporate brand name ASR Group. Its ownership structure is based on a partnership which includes the Florida Crystals Corporation, part of FLO-SUN, a sugar empire of the Fanjul brothers whose origins go back to Spanish-Cuban sugar plantations of the early 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tereos</span> Worldwide manufacturer of sugar, starch and bioethanol.

Tereos is a cooperative conglomerate, primarily active in the processed agricultural raw materials, in particular sugar, alcohol and starch markets. It has 44 factories in 9 countries, including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenia, Tanzania, Belgium and France and employs about 20.000 people.

<i>The Sugar Girls</i>

The Sugar Girls: Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle's East End is a work of narrative non-fiction based on interviews with women who worked in Tate & Lyle's East End factories in Silvertown from the mid-1940s onwards. Written by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, it was published by Collins in 2012. The authors were inspired to write it by Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife.

Sir Oliver Lyle, OBE (1891–1961) was a British sugar technologist during the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Joseph Eastick</span>

John Joseph Eastick was a British chemist, is noted for being the first chemist at the sugar refinery Abram Lyle and Sons and patenting special methods for making brewers’ saccharum, inverted sugar syrup and golden syrup.

Charles Esau Eastick was a British chemist, noted for formulating golden syrup and patenting special methods for making brewers' saccharum and inverted sugar.

Fowler Ltd. or Fowler Limited was a sugar refining company headquartered in Blackwall, London, England.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Annual Report 2023" (PDF). Tate & Lyle. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
  2. ↑ "About us". Tate & Lyle. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Tate & Lyle Home".
  4. ↑ The River Thames from Hampton Court to the Millennium Dome (1999) ISBN   1-86011-701-5
  5. ↑ Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi (2012). The Sugar Girls . Collins. ISBN   978-0-00-744847-0.
  6. ↑ "Lyle's Golden Syrup tin (image)". Lyle's Golden Syrup. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  7. 1 2 "Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup rebrand drops dead lion". BBC News. 20 February 2024.
  8. 1 2 "Sir Saxon Tate, Bt". The Daily Telegraph. 5 September 2012. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  9. ↑ "Tate & Lyle plans end of 250-year Scots link with switch to London plant. Bitter blow from sugar firm". The Herald. Glasgow. 21 July 1995. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  10. ↑ "DuPont and Tate & Lyle to Open $100 Million Bioproducts Plant". GreenBiz. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  11. ↑ Sin, Lee Tin; Rahmat, Abdul Razak; Rahman, W. A. W. A. (2012). Polylactic Acid: PLA Biopolymer Technology and Applications. William Andrew. ISBN   978-1437744590.
  12. ↑ "Tereos starch subsidiary Syral finalises the acquisition of 5 Tate & Lyle Plants" (PDF). Syral. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 November 2008. Retrieved 14 January 2010.
  13. ↑ "Farewell, Tunnel Refineries". 853: News, views and issues around Greenwich, Charlton, Blackheath and Woolwich, south-east London. Retrieved 4 September 2016.
  14. ↑ "A history of Tate & Lyle told in cake". The Royal Docks. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  15. ↑ "Tate & Lyle sugar to be Fairtrade". BBC News. 23 February 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2008.
  16. ↑ Alison Frankel. "Sweet Surrender: Bingham Wins ITC Sugar Substitute Case". Litigation Daily. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  17. ↑ Fu, Rice; Zhao, Viola (10 September 2021). "2021年全球食用增稠剂企业榜" [Global Food Thickener Companies List] (in Chinese). Retrieved 20 February 2022.
  18. ↑ "Tate & Lyle acquires developer and producer of plant-based protein". Food and Drink Technology. Retrieved 5 May 2022.
  19. 1 2 Tate & Lyle sells sugar arm to American Sugar Refining BBC News, 1 July 2010
  20. ↑ Finch, Julia; Wray, Richard (1 July 2010). "Tate & Lyle agrees sale of historic sugar business for £211m". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  21. ↑ Matt Nicholls (23 February 2011). "Sweet! Tate & Lyle lives celebrated". Newham Recorder .
  22. ↑ "Nick Hampton Appointed CEO". Tate & Lyle Press Release. 16 January 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  23. ↑ Elejalde-Ruiz, Alexia (22 August 2019). "A natural sweetener with a tenth of sugar's calories. Allulose, developed in Hoffman Estates, could be 'breakthrough ingredient.'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 25 August 2019.
  24. ↑ "KPS Capital Partners To Acquire Controlling Stake In Tate & Lyle's Primary Products Business In North America And Latin America". Tate & Lyle PLC. 1 April 2022. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
  25. ↑ "Tate & Lyle acquires Quantum Hi-Tech Biological for $237m". UK Investor Magazine. 31 March 2022. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
  26. ↑ "Tate & Lyle announces rebrand". Food Business News. 31 January 2023. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  27. ↑ "Tate & Lyle bulks up food ingredients with $1.8 bln CP Kelco deal". Reuters. 20 June 2024. Retrieved 27 June 2024.
  28. ↑ "Our structure". Tate & Lyle. Retrieved 20 March 2019.

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