Company Information for Tate & Lyle plc

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LSE; TATE

Company Statement

Tate & Lyle is a world-leading manufacturer of renewable food and industrial ingredients. All our ingredients are produced from renewable crops, predominantly corn (maize) and sugar cane. We take these renewable crops and transform them through the use of innovative technology into value added ingredients for our food, beverage and industrial customers.

Backed by a strong and growing research organisation, Tate & Lyle's ingredients help add taste, texture, nutrition and increased functionality to everyday products used by millions of people around the world.

Tate & Lyle was founded in the UK in 1921 but its roots can be traced back to a number of companies established in the middle of the 19th century focused on sugars in Europe and corn milling in the USA and Europe. Tate & Lyle has been purchasing corn from US farmers and cane sugar from a variety of countries for over a century. Making sure we have high-quality raw materials at the right price is the starting point for how we do business.

Vision
Tate & Lyle's vision is to create the world's leading renewable ingredients business. We aim to achieve this by building a consistent portfolio of distinctive, profitable, high-value solutions in products and services for our customers.

Operations
Tate & Lyle is headquartered in the UK and is a global company currently operating more than 50 production facilities throughout Europe, the Americas and South East Asia. At 31 March 2008, Tate & Lyle employed 6,488 people in its subsidiaries and joint ventures. Our workforce encompasses a broad range of skills and experience in areas such as food science, sales and marketing, engineering and business support services.

The Group operates through four business divisions:
    *Food & Industrial Ingredients, Americas
    *Food & Industrial Ingredients, Europe
    *Sucralose
    *Sugars

Strategy
Tate & Lyle is committed to providing long-term value for our shareholders. Our strategy is to build a stronger value added business on a low-cost commodity base. To deliver growth, we focus on five key business objectives.

Business objectives
Serve our customers
Delivering excellent customer service is at the core of everything we do. Our aim is to be the partner of choice in our customers' innovation processes and to help them develop more successful consumer products. Throughout our business, we have set up cross-functional teams to work with our customers to provide consumer and customer insights and to support them in looking for new product innovation opportunities.

Operate efficiently and safely
We aim to be the lowest-cost and most efficient producer in all our markets. Through our expertise in high-volume process management, our focus on technical and manufacturing excellence and the efficient use of services such as logistics and utilities, we are continually working to improve the efficiency of our operations. We also strive to ensure that there are safe and healthy conditions for everyone at our sites.

Invest in acquisitions and partnerships
We continually evaluate acquisition opportunities that would add strategic value by enabling us to enter new markets or add products, technologies and knowledge more efficiently than we could organically. We also aim to grow our business by forming joint ventures and partnerships to develop and distribute new products, and to enhance the capabilities of our existing ingredient portfolio. Using alliances and joint ventures can be an efficient way to lower our cost of investing in new areas and markets, and help secure access to new and complementary technology and expertise.

Invest in technology and people
We are investing in our research and development capabilities to help us develop innovative solutions that meet our customers’ product challenges. We are also complementing our own capabilities through business and technology partnerships, university collaborations and investments in start-up companies. To develop talent, improve leadership and help our employees succeed, we operate various programmes designed to ensure we have the right skills at all levels to grow our business.

Grow the contribution from value added products
We are committed to continuing to grow the contribution from our value added products. Value added ingredients utilise technology or intellectual property enabling our customers to produce distinctive products and Tate & Lyle to obtain a price premium and/or sustainable higher margins.

We provide customers in four key markets with quality services and ingredients made from corn or cane sugar, which impart functionality that is vital for our customers’ products. Generating returns and growing our business requires carefully managing the product mix. This involves maintaining a high-volume, low-cost commodity base to help produce our higher-margin, value added ingredients and services.

Company Diagram

We provide customers in a number of industries with a range of distinctive, high-quality ingredients made from corn, sugar or wheat. We also create unique formulations that solve problems for our customers, providing value beyond the basic ingredients. Here we set out the key markets we serve, with examples of the products and services we offer.

Current Operations

What we do
Through our production facilities around the world we turn raw materials – corn or cane sugar – into quality ingredients used by millions of people every day.

Sustainable sourcing
Ensuring we have a long-term, reliable supply of corn and cane sugar for our plants is essential. This involves developing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with growers, farmers and other commercial partners to secure supply, understanding commodity markets, and hedging costs where feasible.

Creating volume
To create the hundreds of quality ingredients our customers want, we begin by processing large volumes of raw materials from which we create basic products that are either sold on or used as the starting point for developing speciality ingredients and branded goods. Creating this volume and operating large-scale, efficient plants, allow us to keep unit costs low across the business.

Preserving value
Generating optimal returns from large-scale commodity manufacturing requires firm cost and risk control. This involves careful management of any commodity exposure, negotiating the right price for our ingredients, and providing our customers with quality products, within specification, on time, first time.

Adding value
Rapidly changing lifestyles are causing consumers to demand more from the products they buy – be they good food on-the-go or natural cosmetics. Our expertise in carbohydrate processing and blending, specialist R&D knowledge and insights into the market give us an edge in developing ingredients that help add taste, nutrition and increased functionality to our customers’ products.

Going to market
We provide customers in four key markets with quality services and ingredients made from corn or cane sugar, which impart functionality that is vital for our customers’ products. Generating returns and growing our business requires carefully managing the product mix. This involves maintaining a high-volume, low-cost commodity base to help produce our highermargin, value added ingredients and services.

People
Running a diverse business like Tate & Lyle, which develops, manufactures and sells a huge variety of products and services to customers in different markets across the world, relies on a team of highly skilled, motivated people from a wide range of disciplines.

External environment and risk factors
Every business needs to be responsive to its competitive and regulatory environments. Understanding the issues that could have an impact on our business is vital for good risk management and long-term commercial success.

Our ingredient services:
Consumer research
We have a rolling programme of consumer research which provides us and our customers with insights into dietary habits, preferences and aspirations. We use these insights to direct our internal research and development, to help market our ingredients and services, and to help our customers anticipate and respond to changing customer preferences.

Health and Wellness
With health and wellness driving innovation in today's food industry, our ingredients and services enable food producers to create products that meet specific nutritional targets and taste as good as regular brands. We work with customers to deliver consumer benefits in areas including obesity and weight management; digestive health and immunity and children's health. Our ENRICH™ service, launched in 2007, is one example; and the recent launch of PROMITOR™ Dietary Fibres, which enable the addition of fibre without compromising flavour or texture, is another.

Sweeteners
Tate & Lyle sells a wide range of sweeteners. With expertise in sugars, syrups and SPLENDA® Sucralose, Tate & Lyle provides customers with sensory research and technical guidance on sweeteners and sweetener blends.

Stabiliser & texturant systems
Our functional ingredient businesses, G. C. HAHN & Co., Tate & Lyle Custom Ingredients and Cesalpinia Foods, specialise in sourcing ingredients for stabiliser and texturant systems. Their leading specialists provide or complement R&D expertise for many customers and by building close working relationships often become trusted long term development partners.

Our ingredients include:

    * Food Starches
    * Industrial Starches
    * Corn Sweeteners
    * Sugars and Syrups
    * SPLENDA® Sucralose
    * Molasses
    * PROMITOR™ Dietary Fibres
    * Acidulants
    * Biogums
    * Bio-Ethanol
    * Bio-PDO™

Food Starches
Food starches are used by food and beverage producers to add texture and body, and to enhance mouthfeel. They also bind ingredients together, provide stability and help food to retain moisture.

Industrial Starches
In the paper industry, our starches are used to increase dry paper strength and improve surface conditions. Our speciality starches are used to bond the different layers of paper in the manufacture of corrugated board. Starches are also used in adhesive and building product applications, and the textile industry to increase weaving efficiencies.

CornSweeteners                                                                                                                       Corn-derived sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup, glucose syrup, fructose and dextrose are used in soft drinks and foods to provide sweetness, mouthfeel and energy. Some are also used as a feedstock in fermentation processes to create alcohols (including bio-ethanol).

Sugars and Syrups
Syrus Cane sugar, syrups and treacles are used to provide natural sweetness, texture, colour and flavour in many different types of food and drink. Tate & Lyle is the largest cane sugar refiner in the EU, producing over 1.3m tonnes per annum. Our retail sugars and syrups are leading brands in the UK (Tate & Lyle sugar and Lyle's Golden Syrup) and in Portugal (Sidul and Sores). Tate & Lyle Granulated White Cane Sugar, sourced from Belize, is now Fairtrade. All our UK retail cane sugar products should be Fairtrade certified by the end of 2009.

SPLENDA®Sucralose                                                                                                                    SPLENDA® Sucralose is a no-calorie, high-intensity sweetener that's made from sugar, tastes like sugar but it's not sugar. Because of its great sugar-like taste and unique ability to hold sweetness through a variety of high-temperature processing techniques and over long periods on the shelf, SPLENDA® Sucralose has become a sweetener of choice for the world's leading food and beverage manufacturers, and is used in over 4,000 products worldwide.

Molasses                                                                                                                              Molasses is a versatile co-product of sugar production. It is a nutritious animal feed and can be used as a raw material for fermentation. Molasses is also used in a number of industrial applications such as road de-icer coatings, dyes and tyre manufacture.

PROMITOR™ Dietary Fibres
PROMITOR™ is a range of dietary fibres that deliver the health benefits consumers' desire, with the great taste they want. PROMITOR™ Dietary Fibre is easy to integrate into existing formulations, without compromising flavour or texture. Its versatility can enable development of new health-plus versions of products in a wide range of food categories.

Acidulants                                                                                                                            Acidulants such as citric acid, potassium citrate and sodium citrate are produced from fermenting carbohydrate sources such as sugar or dextrose. Citric acid is used to enhance flavour and preserve a wide range of foods, beverages and pharmaceuticals. It is also widely used as a natural cleaning agent in detergents.

Biogums
Biogums such as xanthan gum, locust bean gum and guar gum are used by the food industry to provide texture and viscosity, replace fat and act as stabilisers. Our industrial-grade xanthan gum, STAZAN X®, is used in the oil-well drilling industry as a lubricant and coolant.

Bio-Ethanol
We use corn to make bio-ethanol as a renewable, alternative to petroleum, which helps to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.

Bio-PDO™                                                                                                                              Bio-PDO™ is a versatile, high-performance ingredient that can be used to replace glycols made from petrochemicals in cosmetics, liquid detergents and industrial applications such as anti-freeze. It can also be used to produce speciality polymers such as DuPont™ Sorona® polymer which is used in textile applications like clothing and upholstery.

Board of Directors and Key Management

The Board
Sir David Lees	Chairman
Iain Ferguson	Chief Executive

Non-executive Directors:
Richard Delbridge	Senior Independent Director
Evert Henkes	Independent Non-executive Director
Dr Barry Zoumas	Independent Non-executive Director
Robert Walker	Independent Non-executive Director
Elisabeth Airey	Independent Non-executive Director
Timothy Lodge	Acting Group Finance Director and Director of Investor Relations
Robert Gibber	Company Secretary and General Counsel

Group Executive Committee Members
Iain Ferguson	Chief Executive
Timothy Lodge	Acting Group Finance Director and Director of Investor Relations
Robert Gibber	Company Secretary and General Counsel
Matthew Wineinger	President, Food & Industrial Ingredients, Americas
Olivier Rigaud	President, Food & Industrial Ingredients, Europe
Karl Kramer	President, Sucralose
Ian Bacon	Chief Executive, Sugars
Dr. Robert Fisher	President, Global Research and Development

Company Address

Sugar Quay
Lower Thames Street

London, London, United Kingdom EC3R 6DQ


Telephone:	(+44) (0)20 7626 6525
Facsimile:	(+44) (0)20 7623 5213
Email:	info[at]tateandlyle.com
Website:	http://www.tateandlyle.com

Additional Address/Key Contact

Contact:
Mark Robinson
Head of Investor Relations
investorrelations@tateandlyle.com
Tel: 020 7626 6525

Annual General Meeting

July

Year End

31 March

Most Recent Statement

06/11/08 - Half-yearly Report
03/11/08 - Total Voting Rights
28/10/08 - Transaction in Own Shares
01/10/08 - Total Voting Rights
30/09/08 - Director/PDMR Shareholding
27/09/07 - Tate & Lyle PLC - Trading Statement

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