Sugar and Molasses, Starch and Glucose
Sugar is a general term for about 100 different substances, all based on carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, from fruits we get fructose, from grain we can get glucose and milk contains lactose. In Canada they tap the sap of the Maple tree and refine this into sugar, however I understand we only import that in small quantities (in drums I believe). The most important sugar from a railway perspective is sucrose, which is recovered from sugar cane (imported) and sugar beet (home grown). The sugar beet industry is discussed separately below. Up to the 1950s there were quite a umber of firms refining cane sugar however since the 1970s there have only been two sugar suppliers in the UK; Tate & Lyle (selling cane sugar and some imported refined sugar) and British Sugar (selling the sugar recovered from sugar beet in the UK, topped up with imports when required). There are about half a dozen sugar dealers who purchase the sugar for sale to the end users.
Sugar refineries were established in many of the British ports, taking in cane sugar from the West Indies, in the country areas there were refineries to process the British sugar beet crop. They are sometimes called sugar mills but refinery is the more common term. After the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century the refineries switched to refining raw sugar imports from the European sugar beet industry, however cane sugar imports have continued. The Thames Refinery in East London, the world's largest sugar refinery, handles almost one million tonnes of imported sugar per year.
In the cane growing countries the cane is cut, crushed and sprayed with water to wash out the sugar. Lime is added (part of the purification process) and the liquid is concentrated in 'evaporators' (to boil off the water). The sugar is then placed in a vacuum tank and boiled, reducing it to something called 'massecuite' which is a mixture of sugar and a thick syrup called molasses. This is then shipped either in large barrels. If the massecuite is first run through a centrifuge and most of the syrup is removed it can be shipped in bags, this latter type is classed as either 'dry' (no syrup) or 'green' (liable to exude syrup). The molasses removed at the sugar mill might also be shipped, this was transported in wooden barrels or in bulk. The barrels used had to have small 'spile holes' near the side bung, these were blocked or 'spiled' with wooden spills during transport but opened when stored (or stowed on a ship) to allow the gasses from the inevitable fermentation to escape. There was a case where dockers in London were killed by the fumes from barrels of molasses. The bulk form was transported in purpose built tankers or in the 'deep tanks' of standard general cargo ships. It was heated to 90 deg F to allow it to be pumped, on the ships they had steam pipes to allow for this sort of cargo (also required for some vegetable oils). A variant was 'hard molasses' which was problematic as it tended to set almost solid, making discharging troublesome.
Sugar beet (which looks like a big, rather fat, very light brown (almost white) carrot) is processed in a factory to recover the massecuite, which is then processed in a refinery in the same way as cane sugar.
At the refinery the massecuite is placed in large 'spin dryers' which separate out the solid raw brown sugar from the liquid molasses. The brown sugar is then re-processed at the refinery, it is dissolved in water and treated with chemicals, filtered through cloth and bone charcoal, then crystalised again to produce white granulated sugar.
The sugar was shipped out in sacks, with boxes for 'cube sugar', the examples below show (left) the branding on Tate sugar sacks in (I think) the 1920s and (right) handling sugar sacks in the later 1930s. The sacks on the trucks seem to be unbranded, suggesting they are being shipped by sea (sacks were usually marked but there was there was little point in spending money on branding if the bags were unlikely to be returned). Note the pronounced 'ears' on the sacks.
Fig ___ Tate Sugar sack and box and sacks
Treacle (basically just molasses, a dark reddish brown syrup with a slightly bitter taste) and Golden Syrup (a thick, amber-colored form of inverted sugar syrup) are produced during the refining process. Treacle has been around a long time, it is made by blending raw molasses with some refined syrup. Golden syrup was invented in 1883 by Abram Lyle, who was operating a sugar refinery in London. Initially he sold it in wooden casks, the familiar green and gold tins were introduced in 1885.
'Liquid sugar' is sugar dissolved in water, this has been used since at least the 1930s for industrial food production. Although a 'diluted' and hence less valuable product it is used because it can be pumped and does not require mechanical handling and measuring. The main firm behind this idea were Manbre & Garton (formed in 1926 when the two firms, both dating back to the later 19th century, merged). The company specialised in sugars and glucose for breweries and confectionary companies and in 1930 they pioneered the transport of bulk liquid sugars. They acquired Sankey Sugars in 1935 followed by Martineaux Sugar in 1961. From 1963 they reverted to Manbre' Sugars Ltd. Fowlers Treacle was acquired in 1976 in the same year the company was absorbed into Tate & Lyle. Manbre's fleet of over 100 vehicles included many Scammels hauling insulated 2370 gallon tankers.
Sugar Beet
The method of obtaining sugar from sugar beet was developed in the 18th century, but it did not become a fully commercialised industrial operation until early in the 20th Century. The British had relied on cane sugar from the West Indies but in the uncertainty following the abolition of slavery in 1833 there was a shift toward obtaining sugar made from beet in Europe (mainly Germany).
Fig ___ Sugar beet
In 1909 the National Sugar Beet Association was formed to establish the manufacture of sugar from British grown beet. In 1912 the first full scale factory was opened (at Cantley in Norfolk) but this closed again in 1916 and we relied on imports of cane sugar for most of our supplies during World War One. After that war the Cantley factory re-opened in 1921 and a new factory at Kelham was opened the following year. The industry required regular assistance from the government in its early years but beet sugar production increased rapidly from 24,000 tons in 1924 to 192,000 tons in 1928, by which time all the factories now in operation had
been built. By the early 1930s we were producing over 400,000 tons a year from beet but the industry could not compete with the price of imports from the Empire.
In 1936 the British Sugar Corporation was created by the Sugar Industry (Reorganisation) Act to manage the entire UK sugar beet crop, this purchased and merged the interests of 13 separate companies with 18 factories across the country.
After World War Two sugar remained under strict Government control until 1956, when the Sugar Act replaced the 1936 Act and set up the Sugar Board. This guaranteed the price for growers, both in the UK and Commonwealth but kept very tight controls on British Sugar. In 1972 Britain joined the European Economic Community (which had been set up in 1957) and the Silver Spoon retail brand for granulated, cubed, caster and icing sugar was launched. In 1977 the Sugar Board was disbanded as the EEC common agricultural policy covered the beet sugar industry. The British Sugar Corporation then became British Sugar plc. and was bought out by a large conglomerate. In the 1991s British Sugar became part of Associated British Foods (a large conglomerate, largely American owned, set up in the 1980s which also owns many other familiar British brands)
The sugar beet is grown by farmers, British Sugar operate only the factories and distribution chain and when the harvest fails (as it did on occasion in the 1970s) British Sugar buys in supplies from Tate & Lyle or from the continent to meet its commitments. Tate & Lyle merged with Manbre & Garton in the 1970s, so in the UK there were only two sugar suppliers, Tate & Lyle selling imported cane sugar and British Sugar selling sugar from UK sugar beet. The lorry shown below, based on a photo taken in 1960, shows a lorry loaded with sacks of sugar, carried on but not strapped down to, single faced pallets. I was surprised it was not sheeted over, but the sheet may have been removed when the photograph was taken.
Fig ___ Sugar sacks being delivered on pallets
To give some idea of the scale of production at a modern sugar beet factory the British Sugar factory at Bury St. Edmunds produces 1,300 tonnes of sugar from sugar beet every day, from 12,000 tonnes of beet, with about 1.85 million tonnes being processed each year. This beet comes from 1,300 growers, who receive a total of 58 million pounds in payment in an average year. The factory has its own power station on-site, supplying both heat and power for the process. The factory has five silos, holding a total of up to 70,000 tonnes of sugar. Sugar production is seasonal and the factory typically processes beet for 6 or 7 months of the year, the silos allow uninterrupted supplies to the customers for the remaining months. I have traced no pre-war references to silos and I believe they used to maintain a stock of sugar in bags stored in warehouses in the 1930s (but I might be wrong on that).
Sugar beets were difficult to grow, requiring a lot of hard manual labour in the fields. The beets are harvested in the autumn, the farmers cut the tops of the beets by hand in the fields (they feed the tops to their cattle) and ran the beet through a rotating iron cage to shake off as much soil as possible. The beets were then loaded by hand in to railway wagons for bulk delivery to the factories (since the 1980s, possibly earlier, I believe only road transport has been used). By the 1950s mechanical aids were in use, the beets were still topped by hand but machinery was used to shake off the soil and load the beet truck to go to the railway yard.
Fig ___ Powered sugar beet cleaner/loader from the later 1950s
By the 1960s they had harvesting machines, although the 'headlands' (where the machine turns round at each end of the field) were still done by hand. There remained a lot of manual work getting the beets spaced individually after they had been planted and the shoots started to show.
The railways greatly facilitated the growth of the business, allowing the beet to be transported economically to large processing works to recover the sugar. Although seasonal in nature the autumn sugar beet traffic was a substantial logistic exercise for the railways. Specialised stock for seasonal traffic was not widely used, other stock being pressed into service as required. The East Anglian sugar beet crop was usually moved in mineral wagons, correspondence in the model press mentioned the use of 24.5 ton steel mineral wagons being used in the British Railways era (these wagons are available in N as a kit from Parkside Dundas). The wagons were not sheeted and the light brown sugar beet was piled in (the beet is white but it had some earth clinging to it), a card insert with some OO scale ballast painted with a mix of light greys, a hint of cream and browns would serve.
Fig ___ Sugar beet growing areas and factories
The sugar beet crop is substantial, the annual harvest has long been known in the industry as 'the campaign period', when railway wagons were used they had to muster everything they could find to cope with the traffic during the season. Huge piles of beet build up in the open at the factory, generally they are tipped onto a concrete 'pad' and since the 1980s they have used high pressure water jets to move the beet into the factory (this also washes off any remaining soil).
The factories were big, the sketch below is based on an OS map but the layout has been compressed (to keep the overall picture size down for this website). This would be a typical arrangement, the works has its own locomotive with associated engine shed, the main line locomotives only working the loops of the exchange sidings.
Fig ___ Sugar beet factory track plan
In the factory the sugar beet is washed and cut into slices by a machine, it is then placed in sealed tanks called 'diffusers' where hot water dissolves the sugar. These are cylindrical and can be either horizontal or vertical, I believe the vertical was the more common type in the UK up to the 1960s at least. Horizontal types can be up to twenty feet in diameter and a couple of hundred feet long. The liquid that comes out of the diffuser is called raw juice, the colour will be a dark red to black depending on the design of the diffuser.
The sliced vegetable matter that comes out of the diffuser is pressed to extract the last of the raw juice then mixed with molasses, dried, bagged and sold to the animal feed makers as 'Animal Feed Shreds'. The drier used for this latter process produces the characteristic plume of steam which is associated with these factories.
Meanwhile the raw juice is passed to another tank where 'milk of lime' (also called caustic lime, a suspension of calcium hydroxide in water) is added to purify it. It then goes into yet another tank where carbon dioxide is bubbled up through it, this precipitates out the lime as calcium carbonate (chalk). The liquid is then filtered through cloth and the residual vegetable matter from this filtering is mixed with water and piped off to 'filter beds' bed to 'condition', being sold on the following years as a lime soil conditioner.
The liquid exiting the filters is mostly water (over 80 percent) so it goes to an 'evaporator' (to boil off the water). The resulting concentrate can then be stored in tanks until it can be finally refined. The concentrated liquid is placed in a vacuum tank and boiled, reducing it to something called 'massecuite' which is a mixture of sugar crystals and a thick syrup called molasses. This is then refined as described for cane sugar above and stored in silos to 'condition' before being bagged and sold.
Since the 1960s some beet sugar has been sold as a liquid, the sugar is dissolved in hot water which can then be pumped and transported by tanker. This is used because it is easier to handle at the customer end, the liquid is a consistent 'strength' and does not requiring mechanical handling and weighing.
Typical sugar beet factories are big, I have seen no references to small establishments, they are generally a tightly grouped collection of large buildings with a very tall chimney. By the 1960s they often had very large silos (in the sketch below these replace the smaller building) and also some large storage tanks (presumably for molasses and possibly 'liquid sugar'). The tanks I have seen photographs of all appear to be painted white, the silos appear to be concrete, and have a distinctly post-war look about them. Presumably pre-war the surplus was stored in sacks in warehouses. I have not yet traced any illustrations to the open ponds used to 'condition' the 'lime' fertiliser bi-product from the works.
Fig ___ Typical sugar beet factory in the 1920s
Unless you have a lot of room to play with the best options are either a low relief building against the backscene or a corner location (the latter allows larger stockpiles of sugar beet, which were very characteristic of the prototype). There would normally be more than one siding, and if you have a large collection of mineral wagons, some PO types being 'out of area', this is an industry worth considering. As far as I am aware they works did not operate their own locomotives (again I could be wrong on that point).
Molasses
Molasses is what is left after the refining of sugar (either beet or cane sugar), as the sugar is 'boiled' three times there are three grades. The 'first molasses' is a sweet syrupy liquid, the 'third molasses' (known as blackstrap molasses) is actually quite bitter but contains a lot of useful foods (a tablespoon full of this 'blackstrap molasses' gives you 20 percent of the recommended daily dose of calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron). Molasses is used for a range of products, industrial ethyl-alcohol is made by fermenting the stuff then distilling the result. This then gets something nasty such as wood naphtha or pyridine added to try and stop people drinking it (pure alcohol is extremely poisonous). Up to the 1920s the ethanol from molasses was important in the manufacture of explosives. It can be used as a chelating agent to remove rust, as the base material for fermentation into rum and it can be used as a minor component of mortar for brickwork or used in the building industry as an additive to concrete. Molasses is also used to flavour some brands of tobacco, some pipe tobacco was flavoured in this way into the early 1980s, these days it is confined to some of the brands produced for smoking through a middle eastern water pipe (i.e. hookah, shisha, narghile, etc).
Molasses is widely used in the manufacture of various animal foods, one notable example being Molassine Meal, a black horse food (it was later branded 'for all animals' and is widely used as a supplement in pig food). This was produced by Molassine Co Ltd. who were set up in Greenwich in 1900 by Arthur Stein (an East European immigrant) to exploit a 'secret formula for animal feed'. This was basically sphagnum moss mixed with molasses (they used both beet and cane molasses). For more on their range of animal feeds see also 'Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and animal feed'. The picture below, taken from an advert in 1918, shows their hen food sack.
Fig ___ Molassine Hen Food (1918)
The company was bought by United Molasses in the early 1970s and the name changed to Tate & Lyle in 1978. The Greenwich plant, which continued trading under the Molassine brand and was noted for its rather pungent smells, closed in 1981 but production of the Main Ring (horse foods) and Molassine Meal brands continued at a plant in Burton on Trent.
United Molasses Co Ltd (now Tate & Lyle Molasses) has dominated the British market for many years. The company was originally set up in Liverpool in 1910 as a cattle feed importer under the name Marquis. Molasses is used in cattle feeds and the company began importing molasses in bulk, operating its own ships as well as chartered in tonnage and storing the stuff in a custom-built 3,000-ton storage tank in Hull. In 1925 the company moved to London and was renamed United Molasses, going on to purchase more ships (operating as the Athel Line and purchasing a controlling interest in Anchor Line in 1949). In 1937 the company sold their Liverpool refinery to Tate & Lyle and the two companies became increasingly interlinked. In 1963 United Molasses was bought by Tate & Lyle (which thus became the world leader in the molasses trade). The United Molasses brand continued in use however. Major bulk molasses storage terminals are located in Greenock, Liverpool, Hull, Portbury and Dagenham. As far as I can tell these are essentially tank farms, the tanks being painted white.
United Molasses owned a fleet of unfitted rail tanks from the 1930s (possibly earlier) to the 1970s. These were replaced by larger vacuum braked tanks they hired in (but they carried the UM brand). After TOPS came in (1974) these red tanks had their ends painted blue as shown below and remained in use into the 1980s (possibly later).
Fig ___ United Molasses tankers
In the 1980s Distillers Ltd operated some air braked TTA tanks for molasses, the 'livery' consisted of a blue central section, about a third of the length of the tank, with yellow ends. These became very dirty in service, to the point where they appeared all-over rust brown, although when someone wiped an oily rag over the markings at either end there was a visible patch of yellow.
Starch, Modified Starch & Glucose
Starch is derived from vegetable matter and has been used to stiffen fabrics for centuries. Starch is a white powder substance which is today mainly used in foods and adhesives, it is also used in paper manufacturing and can also be converted into glucose (discussed below).
Serious commercial development of the manufacture of starch in the United Kingdom dates from about 1840, and the next five years saw the establishment of a number of suppliers including Isaac Reckitt, Colmans and Brown & Polson, manufacturing starch variously from wheat, potatoes, rice and sago, and selling their products principally for domestic laundry use.
The method of production relies on the 'wet milling (milling with water) of corn. The batches of corn are soaked in water for about 36 hours. A small amount of sulphur dioxide is added to the water, and the temperature is kept at about 50°C. This softens the corn and separates some of the husk (which is recovered by evaporating the liquid and sold for animal feed). The corn is then ground between two studded plates, removing the outer layers (husk) from the kernels. The corn and water are then placed in a 'hydrocyclone' (essentially a centrifuge) which separates the germ from the milled slurry. The germ is subsequently dewatered in a screw press and dried in steam-tube driers and sold to manufacturers of edible oils and margarines. The next stage, another centrifuge, separates the gluten from the starch slurry and the gluten is centrifuged again to concentrate it prior to dewatering on a rotary filter dried, this is then again sold as animal feed. More centrifuging removes the last of the gluten, the starch slurry is pumped to the various plants for processing, or is dewatered and flash dried for storage.
In the 1850s a Mr Polson patented a 39-step process for the manufacture of pure maize starch. Brown and Polson’s “Patent Corn Flour” caught on and became a household name.
Other firms set up to make starch in this way but most failed, only three (Brown & Polson, William MacKean and William Wotherspoon), were suppliers of starch. Wet milling was adopted in the USA in the 1850s and the UK began importing a lot of their maize starch in about 1900. In 1903 a British company called Corn Products Limited was set up to act as a central distribution and sales agency for American starch and glucose.
Brown & Polson Ltd, originally a private company, was incorporated in 1920 and in 1922 MacKean and Wotherspoon merged with it. In 1935 Corn Products Co Ltd acquired Brown & Polson Ltd, then the only United Kingdom producer of maize starch. Corn Products continued to import from its parent company, however there was competition from various UK and European sources and in 1938 Corn Products Co was forced to close the MacKean starch plant in the Brown & Polson group. By this time Corn Products group accounted for about half the starch and glucose sold in the UK (although some firms were tied to other producers, notably Tunnel who used only Belgian starch to make their glucose). About half the starch sold by Corn Products was made in the UK, the rest being imported from the USA and France.
During the Second World War starch was controlled by a government agency, this control ended in the 1950s. In 1950 Corn Products Company Ltd changed its name to Brown & Polson Ltd. Its subsequent development included the building of a new factory including a wet-milling plant at Manchester and the eventual transference to it, complete by 1965, of all its wet-milling operations and associated goods production.
There was for many years a six wheeled tank wagon available in OO marked Corn Products Ltd, presumably to carry glucose (discussed below), although it may have carried a starch-water mix (less valuable and hence less likely to justify the investment), however I do not know if a prototype existed or not. As noted above the company had changed its name to Brown and Poulson in 1950 but the Corn Products brand may have continued in use at that time.
Fig ___ OO scale Corn Products rail tank
Two new manufacturers, Tunnel Refineries Ltd and Carton Sons & Co Ltd, began to supply dry starch in 1960 and 1962 respectively (they were already producing glucose, discussed below). Imports of starch, particularly from the Continent of Europe, were resumed in the post-war period on a scale which caused considerable anxiety to the United Kingdom manufacturers.
Starch and modified starch factories are simple rectangular industrial buildings, typically about two stories high and fronted by an office block. I would expect a large water tank to be on the roof of the building but I have not yet seen a photo showing one. Incoming would be the corn, in sacks and (since the later 1930s) in bulk hoppers. Outgoing would be the sacks of various animal feed ingredients and sacks of the starch and 'corn flower'. As imported corn was a major ingredient most of the factories are in port towns, but I believe they also took in British produced corn.
Modified Starch
Modified starches are produced from the basic material for various purposes. The first was Dextrin, a modified starch produced by heat treatment, discovered accidentally during an outbreak of fire at a textile factory in 1821. The resulting heat-treated starch, dissolved in water, was found to be a rather good glue. Dextrins ('British gums'), used principally for many years in textile dyeing and printing processes, were subsequently manufactured by a number of firms. Other types of modified starches, such as starch acetate and chlorinated (oxidised) starches were introduced in about 1890 and 1910 respectively (the chlorinated starch had replaced starch acetate by 1930). Until the end of the Second World War William Wotherspoon Ltd was the sole British manufacturer of this product, as it had been previously of starch acetate, but there were some imports of Dutch and German chlorinated starch from 1937 to 1939.
Wotherspoon began to manufacture dextrin in 1922, there were a large number of small manufacturers of dextrins, including James Laing Ltd which had begun its production in 1910. Wotherspoon achieved some success through its development of a process which produced dextrins of uniform quality. A number of new companies entered the market in the
1930's, including Starch Products Ltd, Farina Dextrin Ltd, and Dextrines Ltd. (Wotherspoon, Farina Dextrin, and Dextrines were acquired by the present Brown & Polson Ltd in 1935, 1948 and 1959 respectively). In 1955 Brown & Polson began to manufacture dextrins at its Manchester factory, other types of modified starches being added in the following years.
James Laing was acquired by Manbre & Garton in 1961 and in 1964 a half interest was sold to the National Starch & Chemical Corporation, US. Under the terms of agreements made between the various parties Garton itself began to manufacture certain speciality starches under NSC patents for supply to Laing-National and to sell its output of dry starch to Laing-National for use in the latter's manufacture of NSC modified starches. Starch Products Ltd extended the range of its products and in 1964 entered into an arrangement with the Dutch producer Scholten whereby the latter obtained 80 per cent of Starch Products' equity capital.
Glucose
Glucose manufacture on a laboratory scale can be traced to France in 1812, where it was used as a sweetener to replace sucrose (table sugar) which had become scarce due to the Napoleonic wars. By the end of the 19th century glucose manufacture was a substantial industry in the United States. They used 'wet milling' of corn (maize) to make starch, this was cooked up with acid and water, combining with the latter to produce glucose.
To a chemist glucose is just another 'sugar', the pure form is technically dextrose, although it is usually associated with starch more complex sugars such as sucrose (from cane sugar) can be broken down and one of the products is glucose. Glucose has been used for brewing beer since before the advent of the railways but the range of uses has grown enormously, mainly for adding to foodstuffs. Used in sweets and preserves it provides 'body' and controls crystallization, used in canning it provides body to the syrup without too much sweetness. Glucose is not as sweet as cane sugar but it is cheaper, and (like all sugars) it can be fermented to produce ethyl alcohol, which is an important industrial chemical.
Glucose manufacture began in the United Kingdom in the 1880's, and was based on dry starch until 1904 when Garton Sons & Co Ltd, which had begun to manufacture glucose in the 1880's, built a wet-milling plant for glucose production. In 1911 Nicholls, Nagle & Co Ltd built a wet-milling plant and glucose refinery at Manchester (this business was sold to Spillers in 1917). In 1924 Corn Products Co Ltd which for some years had been selling American glucose, bought the plant from Solliers and started to manufacture glucose from dry starch, the wet-milling section of the factory having been out of action for some time. The company continued to sell United States glucose, but by 1938 most of its supplies were of its own production, centered on the Manchester plant.
A number of manufacturers entered the glucose field in the 1920's and 1930's, viz Valentin, Ord & Nagle Ltd (also known as VON - 1926), Tunnel Glucose Refineries Ltd (1934), Albion Sugar Company Ltd (1935), and Glucose & By-Products Ltd (1937). Tunnel was set up by Glucoseries Reunies of Belgium, along with VON and Albion they began by making glucose from dry starch, but subsequently installed wet-milling plants in 1936, 1958, and 1937 respectively. Glucose & By-Products Ltd was set up to manufacture glucose from Dutch farina, of which large stocks were then being supplied to this country, and another manufacturer, Lancashire Condenseries Limited, began to manufacture glucose from starch (wheat and maize) in 1945.
In 1926 Garton, Sons & Co was acquired by Manbre Sugar & Malt Limited (renamed Manbre & Garton Ltd). Glucose & By-Products Ltd was acquired jointly by Garton and Corn Products
Co Ltd in 1940. In 1959 the former's share was purchased by Brown & Polson Ltd (the new name of Corn Products Co Ltd) and soon afterwards the plant was closed. Valentin, Ord & Nagle was acquired by Manbre & Garton in 1960-1965. Lancashire Condenseries was acquired by the Dutch company, Honig, in 1956 and Albion by the Scholten-Honig group (KSH) in 1967-1969. In 1957 Tunnel made know-how and patent licensing agreements with Staley AG, Switzerland, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AE Staley Manufacturing Co of the USA, for the production of glucose and dextrose by enzyme processes. The Swiss company subsequently acquired 50 per cent of Tunnel's share capital.
Adding a lorry in the company livery to a factory yard helps set the scene. There are several ready painted models of glucose tank lorries available in OO scale, but non as far as I am aware in N.
Fig ___ OO scale glucose road tankers
Production of glucose was centered in Manchester (Corn Products Ltd) and London (most of the other firms). In the UK the most economical method of producing glucose is
from starch slurry (or wet starch) produced by the wet-milling of imported maize.
Although imported dried starch (either maize or potato starch), which is relatively
cheap, can be used to produce glucose the integrated factory using a wet milling system producing a range of products from the starch slurry is much more economical.
Glucose is shipped in drums and also in bulk road tankers, however I have not yet found a reference to rail tanks other than the above mentioned 6-wheeler in Corn Products livery. Molasses (the syrup residue left after sugar has been refined) was certainly shipped by rail, the firm United Molasses operated rail tanks for many years and firms such as BOCM used their tanks to collect molasses. Hence it seems likely that glucose would also find itself shipped by rail.
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