1. In Focus | Tate
10 Wednesday August 7, 2013
by Else Kvist
else.kvist@archant.co.uk
Many are familiar with the ex-
terior of the Tate & Lyle factory
in Silvertown with its iconic
beige-coloured tower that can
be seen from afar.
However, few non-employees
will have been on a tour of the
historic refinery, which has
stood on the 45-acre site for more
than 130 years, and stepped onto
its jetty where large ships dock
every week loaded with raw
sugar from across the world.
So the Recorder decided to
take a look inside the maze of
older and newer factory build-
ings to gain an understanding
of the sugar refinery manufac-
turing process and meet the
people who run it.
Showing us around was vice-
president Gerald Mason who
has been with the company for
10 years. He says this makes
him a newcomer as many staff
come from families who have
worked at the refinery in Fac-
tory Road or its sister plant in
Plaistow for generations.
One of them is community af-
fairs manager Ken Wilson, who
is also joining us on the tour.
Both his father and grandfa-
ther worked there before him,
and Ken has worked across
many parts of the factory while
rising through the ranks.
Kitted out with safety jacket,
glasses, earplugs, hairnet and
hard hats, we walk across the
yard to the Royal Sugar Shed.
Even before stepping inside
we are hit by the pungent smell
of raw sugar, reminding me
of freshly brewed malt beer or
rum.
The raw material was extract-
ed from sugar cane in tropical
and semi-tropical regions of the
globe before starting its journey
across the oceans.
Cranes
Once inside, we are dwarfed by
the sight of pyramid-shaped
mountains of light brown sug-
ar, which has just arrived from
Brazil. The shed can hold 72,000
tonnes though the most stored
in there is 65,000 tonnes.
Gerald said: “The sugar can
vary in colour and quality de-
pending on where in the world
it has come from. The sugar
from Brazil tends to have a
lighter colour whereas the sug-
ar from Africa tends to be much
darker.”
In order to see where the raw
sugar has been transferred
from we make our way down to
the jetty where we meet deputy
port operations manager Mike
Russ, who tells us that today’s
ship has come from Brazil.
He said: “They come in from
all over the world, the Carib-
bean, Africa, South America or
Asia.
“We get about one ship a
week, maybe two. They vary
in size, the smaller carry 7,000
tonnes of sugar and the big-
gest we’ve had is about 42,000
tonnes. The average is 25-28,000.
“The sugar comes in a hold in
the ship, in bulk quantity, it is
not bagged at all.
“We transfer the sugar us-
ing two very large cranes with
grabbers and it then goes into
the Royal Sugar Shed via a con-
veyer system before being then
fed into the refining process.
“Today’s vessels carry 34,000
tonnes and it will take us about
four days to unload working
24/7.”
Complex planning goes into
preparing for the arrival of the
ships.
Gerald explains: “The ships
are so large that when the tide
is low they can’t use the river so
we only really get two chances
a day at high tide to bring them
up and turn them around.
“It can be a nightmare be-
cause you can have done all the
planning but then you may get
a bit of bad weather on the way,
the ship breaks down or one of
the crops goes wrong.
“The arrival of the raw mate-
rial is critical because if some-
thing goes wrong at this stage it
will affect the whole manufac-
turing process.
“If the vessels come from
somewhere like Fiji the crew
may have been on the ship for
six weeks, so you’ve got to bring
on food for their next journey.
Often you need to find people
to repair the ship, things like
that.”
He jokes that London is a
popular stop for crews who are
keen on a night out after weeks
at sea.
Mike and his colleagues tell
us that sometimes the crew
have other requests, such as to
see a priest, and they have to get
a local vicar in.
Apart from accommodating
the ship and crew, and adher-
ing to security and health and
safety legislation, there are also
customs regulations.
Gerald said: “A lot of the sug-
ar we bring in attracts taxes and
at any point the HM Revenues
customs officer can turn up to
check we are paying the right
amount.
“The value of the sugar on to-
day’s ship is about £15-16million
and we are paying nearly £3mil-
lion in tax on the sugar.”
The port managers also over-
see the export of nearly 300,000
How sugar has
travelled across
world to end up
in your cuppa
We take a tour of massive factory by riverside
Tate & Lyle has been
locked in a battle with
Brussels over a policy
which gives Europe’s
sugar beet producers
an “unfair” advantage
over the UK’s sugar
cane refineries.
Since 2010 the
Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) has
restricted the import
of sugar cane, adding
tariffs of up to £300 a
tonne.
As a direct result
Tate & Lyle has had
to reduce its yearly
output of sugar from
1.1 million tonnes
until 2009 to 700,000
tonnes. And in the
past two years 50
staff were laid off,
while production now
operates five days a
week instead of seven
after the company
lost more than
£32million.
Tate & Lyle vice-
president Gerald
Mason has been
tasked with trying to
convince eurocrats
of the need to reform
the policy.
He said: “We have
had a really tough
time paying nearly
£10million a year in
taxes on the raw cane
we import. But things
have got slightly less
unfair for us recently
with some tax
reductions.
“But 2017 will be
crucial for us as the
legislation for our
competitors, the
beet growers, will be
unshackled whereas
we will still be heavily
regulated. So in the
next three to four
years we will have a
really big challenge in
trying to solve that.”
He said the firm
has had a lot of
support from East
Ham MP Stephen
Timms and Newham
Mayor Robin Wales.
He hopes for their
continued backing.
Company’s battle with Brussels
I Tate & Lyle
vice-president
Gerald Mason
Tate & Lyle – it’s a fact
I The company was formed
in 1921 from a merger of
two rival sugar refiners in
Silvertown: Henry Tate &
Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons.
I In 2008, Tate & Lyle
granulated white cane sugar
was accredited as a Fairtrade
product – all the company’s
other retail products followed
in 2009.
I In 2010, the iconic sugar
refining and golden syrup
business was sold to
American Sugar Refining for
£211million.
I The company is listed on
London Stock Exchange and
features on the FTSE 100
Index.
Sugar cane vs sugar beet:
I Sugar cane is the world’s
tallest crop, a giant grass
measuring from 6-19ft. It
grows in tropical and semi-
tropical regions.
I Sugar beet is a root crop,
rather like a parsnip, which
grows in temperate climates
in Europe.
I France and Germany are
among the largest producers.
Sugar from
Brazil tends to have a
lighter colour whereas
the sugar from Africa
tends to be much
darker

2. and Lyle refinery
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Teresa Croxford, who start-
ed as a packaging operator
at the Plaistow site in Janu-
ary 1968, is the factory’s
longest serving employee.
When the Queen visited
Tate & Lyle in 2008, Ter-
esa was one of people who
greeted Her Majesty.
She originally came to the
East End from Ireland and
got herself a holiday job at
the firm.
Later, she took on a per-
manent role and married
one of her colleagues.
One of women featured in
book The Sugar Girls, Ethal
Colquhoun, was her super-
visor. The book consists of
memories of the working
and social life around the
factory in the 1940s to 1960s.
Teresa said: “When I
started out it was all done
manually. We packed the
bags, took them off the con-
veyer belt and stacked them
onto a pallet. It was a very
slow and intense.”
Back then the sugar was
also measured out and put
into bags manually.
Later Teresa moved on
to operating machines and
today she is a packing area
supervisor.
Teresa said: “When I came
down to the Silvertown fac-
tory 18 years ago I started
working on high automated
packaging machines, which
reduced the labour from
four people running a ma-
chine to one, and we went on
to pack 125 bags a minute.”
Teresa has clocked up
45 years with company
I Tate & Lyle worker Teresa Croxford at the refinery
I Pyramids of sugar at the Tate & Lyle refinery in Silvertown Picture: Isabel Infantes
tonnes of refined sugar from
the end of the production line
in small ships to places like
Norway, North Africa and the
Middle East. It is sent by rail to
other parts of Europe.
Back inside the factory I’m
surprised how little manual
work is involved despite the
plant employing 800 staff, 550 of
which are employed directly by
Tate & Lyle while the rest are
through contractors.
The machinery taking the
raw sugar through the refinery
process is operated by staff via
computers.
Warehouse
Gerald explained the proc-
ess: “We turn the raw material,
which is not fit for human con-
sumption, into white granulat-
ed sugar.
“We melt the raw sugar, put
it in water, wash it, filter it and
put it through various proc-
esses to remove the colour and
impurities.
“When we get a pure sugar
liquid the next part of the refin-
ery is to turn it back into that
crisp sugar that we use in coffee
and baking.”
It is then packed into the fa-
mous Tate & Lyle bags lined up
in the packaging section before
being stored in the West Ham
warehouse.
Lined up are one-tonne bags
of sugar and some 25kg sacks,
ready to be exported to small in-
dustrial customers. The smaller
1kg bags that you and I are fa-
miliar with will soon reach su-
permarket shelves.
Visitors can have a rare
look at the growing collec-
tion of company memo-
rabilia at the Silvertown
factory.
The walls of its ‘mini
museum’ are decorated
with old oil paintings of
the company’s two found-
ers, Abram Lyle, who built
the Plaistow Wharf re-
finery in 1881, and Henry
Tate, who expanded his
business to Silvertown in
1878.
Black and white photo-
graphs displayed in cabi-
nets show women working
at the factory while men
were fighting in the Great
War.
Community affairs man-
ager Ken Wilson told the
fascinating tale of how
hundreds of sugar refin-
eries competed for trade.
While most fell by the way-
side, these two bitter rivals
survived and merged after
the deaths of Mr Tate and
Mr Lyle.
Ken said Henry Tate’s
key to success was pur-
chasing the patent for
making sugar cubes.
Refined sugar used to
come in big sugar loaves,
which were then cut into
chunks using various tools
now on display as museum
pieces.
Ken said: “When granu-
lated sugar was intro-
duced, people were still
struggling to get use to it
and the cubes were more
similar to the lumpy sugar
they were used to from the
loaves.”
Abraham Lyle, like
many, struggled in the
competitive granulated
market but started produc-
ing syrup as a by-product.
Ken said: “People who
couldn’t afford sugar
would buy syrup, which
was dispensed from a big
container into small jars
in the shops.
“Soon Lyle realised that
it was so popular that he
began producing the fa-
mous small tins we still
know today.”
Visits to the memora-
bilia collection can be ar-
ranged with Ken via www.
tateandlyle.com
You can learn about firm’s history
I Women working at Tate & Lyle during the First World War