Published on 23rd January 2013
The name of Tate&Lyle ought perhaps to be changed, argues The Times’s Tempus on Wednesday morning. This is because with each passing day traditional sugar is less and less what it does. Thus, about 55% of profits now come from Specialty Food Ingredients (SFI), mainly sweeteners and starches, that go into processed foods. The rest is from processing corn into fructose for soft drinks and so on. Furthermore, with the ever increasing diabetes epidemic demand is set to keep growing quickly. As well, margins in SFI are running at about 23% versus about 8% for corn processing.