The Refining of Sugar
SIR—May I use your columns to answer Mr. Cole's letter on a subject of which I fear your readers may be tiring ? When discussing the extent to which one firm is a monopoly, surely it is necessary to take into account all the consumption of the country to determine the extent to which there is competition? Tate & Lyles share of 52.8 per cent. therefore stands.
In trying to prove the completely false assertion that Tate & Lyle dominates the sugar industry of this country, Mr. Cole keeps on lopping off little bits of the trade and demonstrates that Tate & Lyle do a higher and higher proportion of the remainder. Why not go the whole hog and deduct everybody else's share and show that Tate & Lyle does 100 per cent. of the remainder? Mr. Cole asks for figures relating to Caroni and the West Indies Sugar Company. In 1949 these companies supplied 6,780 tons out of a total of some 180,000 tons of sugar imported but not refined-in the United Kingdom. I wonder where Mr. Cole has got his information that it was through pressure from Tate & Lyle that sugar is refined only at twelve of the Corporation's eighteen factories. Dr. Edith Summerskill said in the House of Commons on April 26th, 1949, that it was not a practical proposition to increase the refining capacity of the British Sugar Corporation.
As to the director on the British Sugar Corporation Board who is also on the Board of Tate & Lyle, he is a much respected technical director who, the British Sugar Corporation will be the first to agree, has rendered great service to the beet industry without ever influencing its policy to the advantage of the refining industry. Incidentally, Tate & Lyle's shareholding in the British Sugar Corporation yields less by way of dividends than is paid by Tate & Lyle to the Corporation by way of the levy imposed by the 1936 Act. Finally, one cannot help remarking on the absence of any claim by Mr. Cole that nationalisation will result in cheaper or better sugar or better conditions for the men and women
in the industry.—Yours faithfully, PETER RUNGE.,
Director, Tate & Lyle, Limited.
Plantation House, Mincing Lane, E.C.3.
[This correspondence is now closed.—Enrroa.]
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