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.
History
Sugar refining
Former 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]
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]
Logo
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 leadership of Saxon Tate (a direct descendant of Henry Tate), 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]
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 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]
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]
^"Farewell, Tunnel Refineries". 853: News, views and issues around Greenwich, Charlton, Blackheath and Woolwich, south-east London. Retrieved 4 September 2016.
Steven K. Ashby and C. J. Hawking (2009). Staley: The Fight For A New American Labor Movement. University of Illinois Press. ISBN978-0-252-07640-4. – A source for information concerning T&L's union-busting activities in the early 1990s in Decatur, Illinois
Sugar and All That... A History of Tate & Lyle by Antony Hugill (Gentry Books, 1978) ISBN0-85614-048-1