Commercial partners and suppliers

Good, long-term relationships with our partners and suppliers are essential at Tate & Lyle.

We have a consistent, Group-wide approach to these relationships, based on our Code of Conduct, which covers purchasing strategies at global, regional and local levels. Supply-chain ethics are very important to us, and we are committed to sharing best practice and improving standards amongst suppliers.

Growers and producers of corn are our biggest suppliers, and we have developed long-standing and mutually beneficial relationships with them over many years. We apply rigorous standards to our raw materials suppliers, and survey many of them on their ethical commitment. We work closely with them to ensure compliance with our needs, implementing traceability and ensuring that our customers’ requirements are fully met.

Corn
Running our large corn wet milling plants efficiently 24 hours a day relies on good management of the corn supply chain. Our corn purchasing teams are responsible for a consistent supply of corn to our plants.

Our Americas corn operations purchase around 2% of the total US corn crop each year, from hundreds of growers who meet the farming and soil conservation standards we expect from our suppliers. Through our network of grain elevators (silos), we purchase grain directly from farmer producers, some of which have been family businesses for over 100 years. We also get millions of bushels from farmer-owned co-operatives and family-owned grain companies, which purchase corn from their local farmer suppliers before selling to Tate & Lyle.

Our European procurement team secures the supply of non-GM corn to our European plants. The team purchases directly from farmers, farmer-owned co-operatives and other commercial partners, all of whom meet our highest quality standard.

Working with the grain of human relationships

Our network of 12 country elevators in the heart of the US cornbelt has to be a model of large-scale industrial efficiency – we process 2 per cent of the entire US corn crop. Our plants need grain 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – and the supply market is competitive, and potentially risky.

But after more than half a century embedded in the farming communities around Decatur and Lafayette, Tate & Lyle’s grain procurement relies as much on trust and teamwork as on accurate logistics. “Buying grain is a business that relies absolutely on relationships,” says Doug Mortensen, Vice President Commodities, Americas. “Farming is community-orientated, and our network is a very important part of that. Farmers trust the people they see year in, year out.”

The key to keeping the grain flowing? Treating suppliers with the same respect we treat customers. “Farmers can choose who they sell to and when, so it’s important we are their first choice to do business with.”

DuPont Tate & Lyle – an energy-saving partnership

Corn is a completely ‘renewable’ resource. Turning it into products previously made from petro-chemicals can be good for the environment – and for business.

Our 50:50 joint venture with DuPont in Loudon, US, uses corn sugar to make the multi-purpose monomer propanediol, or PDO – which favourably competes with rivals relying on a petro-chemical process.

“Our Bio-PDO™ is 100 per cent renewable – it has a unique place in the market, because nobody else is making it on a commercial scale with a biological process,” says Pete Castelli, who is Vice President, Law and Compliance, and one of two Tate & Lyle directors on the joint venture’s board. “We have done a ‘life-cycle’ analysis – and our method uses 40 per cent less energy than petro-chemical production.”

The joint venture sells the Bio-PDO™ directly as Zemea™ – used in cosmetics and detergents; and Susterra™ – an agent in de-icers. DuPont also uses it to make the carpet and clothing textile, Sorona®.