Liverpool Love Lane Sugar Refinery : cross-section plan : in : Tate and Lyle Times " Visitors Edition : Tate & Lyle Ltd. : London : nd [1956]

An interesting small booklet that is a special issue of the company's house magazine, the Tate & Lyle Times. It was produced "for all interested in sugar ... customers, shareholders, employees and visitors to our refineries". Undated it includes data including 1956.

 

Tate & Lyle were the dominant UK sugar refiner and producer formed by merger in 1921 and acquisitions. In post-WW2 years the company agressively fought what was seen as a proposal to nationalise the industry, along with the British Sugar Corporation that held an effective monopoly over the beet manufacturing of sugar, and as part of this invented the "Mr. Cube" advertising symbol who is seen on the cover of the magazine. The company had distinctive packaging for the various products and product ranges they produced. The booklet loos at the history of sugar, the company and it's then contemporaty activities. Needless to say the sugar trades links to slavery gets scant coverage.

 

The booklet has three fine fold-out plans of the company's three major production sites. The Liverpool Love Lane refinery and the Thames refinery in London had come to the company from the Tate side of the business with the Plaistow Wharf refinery being the dowry of the Lyle side of the merger. Sadly no artist nor designer is credited for these rather fine cross-section plans.

 

The Liverpool Love Lane site was purchased by Henry Tate in 1872 when he acquired the rights to the Bouivin Loiseau process of sugar refining that was a technological advance on earlier methods of refining. Merseyside, home to the major port of Liverpool, was an early home to the sugar industry with various refineries including those with links to one of the earliest homes of the industry, Greenock on the River Clyde in Scotland.

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