Tate & Lyle
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Tate & Lyle PLC is a UK based multinational food manufacturer and is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol TATE. It is a major producer of refined sugar, starches, animal feed and other food ingredients with global operations.
The company was formed in 1921 from a merger of two rival sugar refiners, Henry Tate & Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons.
The cooper and shipowner Abram Lyle acquired an interest in sugar refining in 1865 in Greenock, then in Plaistow. Henry Tate (1819-1899) began his business in 1869 in Liverpool, later expanding to London. He used his industrial fortune to found the Tate Gallery in London in 1897. Both companies had large refineries in Silvertown, prompting the 1921 merger. In 1949 the firm introduced its "Mr Cube" brand, as part of a marketing campaign to help it fight a proposed nationalization by the Labour government.
The UK refining operation takes raw sugars from Caribbean sources allowed under the EU Common Agricultural Policy to a level of nearly 50% of the UK demand.
The Lion and the Bee
The company is renowned for its refined sugar cane products, and especially for "Lyle's Golden Syrup", its brand of partially inverted refiners syrup. The Lyle's Golden Syrup trademark (also used on other products) depicts a lion and a swarm of bees, as well as a quotation from the Bible. In Book of Judges, Chapter 14, Samson was travelling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife. During the journey he killed a lion, and on his return past the same spot he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass. Samson later turned this into a riddle at a wedding: "Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness". While no one is sure why this quotation was chosen, Abraham Lyle was a deeply religious man and it has been suggested that it refers either to the strength of the Lyle company which delivers the sweet syrup or possibly even to the trademark tins in which Golden Syrup is sold.
Tate & Lyle is the sole manufacturer of sucralose (trademarked as "Splenda"), a sugar substitute used by PepsiCo, General Mills, Unilever and others.
Related Reading
- Sugar and All That... A History of TATE & LYLE by Antony Hugill (Gentry Books, 1978) ISBN 058614 0481
External links
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