The sugar industry demise

I CANNOT be alone in occasionally wondering how Greenock lost its sugar industry which employed many generations of families.

In my possession is a book produced in 1965 to record the activities of the Tate & Lyle group. Back then, few locals could have imagined there would come a time when Greenock no longer had the Nicolson Street and Drumfrochar Road refineries and United Molasses at the James Watt Dock.

The publication highlights the importance placed by the group on families and the link with

Scotland.

It states: “The refining of sugar in Britain has been mainly concentrated in three centres: London, Greenock and Liverpool and the centre of these centres is Greenock.

“That is why, on days of formal celebration, the Plaistow Wharf refinery of Tate & Lyle flies the Standard of Scotland as well as the Union Flag.

“Abram Lyle, ship owner and sugar refiner, of Greenock, sent his sons to London to build a refinery on the banks of the Thames, and having built the refinery staffed it to the last foreman with Scotsmen not in any mad chauvinism about having bled wi’ Wallace, but because there were no responsible men free in the south who had experience of modern refining.”

Possibly with every name mentioned having links with Greenock, the book advises that two generations of Mackays, three generations of McGlones, four generations of McMarths and five generations of Lyles have worked in Plaistow.

There is also a reference to one unnamed company refinery with 750 employees who had other family members working there.

In addition, a fifth of all personnel had been employed for more than 30 years, and there was one section where everyone had served in excess of 35 years.