Raffinerie Tirlemontoise (), a subsidiary of Raffinerie Tirlemontoise Group (RT Group), is a Belgian sugar producing company. The company whose headquarters is located in Tienen (Belgium) has four business units: sugar activities, Orafti, Surafti and PPE, which together employ more than 1,800 people.
Structure
Locations
The company Raffinerie Tirlemontoise operates two beet sugar factories in Belgium: The factory in Tienen has a capacity of 12,500 tons of beets per day, Wanze Sugar Factory can process 16,500 tons of beets per day. The latter is fed beet juice by the Râperie de Longchamps, the last operational râperie in the world. Sugar specialties are produced in Antwerp (Candico), in Oostkamp (Lebbe Sugar Specialties), and in Wijchen, the Netherlands (Rafti B.V.).
No sugar refinery
Judging by the name 'Raffinerie Tirlemontoise', one would expect that the company also operates a sugar refinery, but that is not the case. When the name Raffinerie Tirlemontoise was given to the company in 1887, it was rare for beet sugar factories to refine their own product to a quality comparable to a sugar refiner's work. In 1878 the company was named in a list of only 12 Belgian sugar refiners. The same work listed over 150 sugar factories. So at the time, the Vinckenbosch company was really considered to own a refinery. At the time, the factory was even mentioned explicitly as a factory with refinery.
In the 20th century, almost every sugar factory began to refine its own product. Giving a different name to a sugar factory that also refined then became useless. However, the company name Raffinerie Tirlemontoise has not changed. Like the company itself, the current owner of the company, Südzucker, consistently refers to the company Raffinerie Tirlemontoise and its two sugar factories.
History
Context
The sugar beet industry in Europe and Belgium has its roots in the Continental System of Napoleon I in his struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars. Sugar from sugar beets was increasingly used as an alternative for sugarcane, when in 1807 the British began a blockade of France, which prevented the import of sugarcane from the Caribbean.
From 1815 to 1830, Belgium was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The kingdom preferred raw cane sugar from its colony Java over raw sugar made from sugar beet. This policy was actually very profitable for the Southern Netherlands. The superior harbor of Antwerp made that shipping lines preferred to ship the Java raw sugar over there, instead of to the harbors of the former Dutch Republic.
After the 1830 Belgian Revolution, the Belgians regained Antwerp in December 1832 after a long siege. In spite of now possessing one of the best harbors of Europe, the Belgians did not gain access to a source of cheap raw cane sugar. In general, the powers which had colonies that produced raw cane sugar took all kinds of customs and fiscal measures that directed raw sugar shipments to their home ports. In turn they protected their domestic refineries by a high tariff on imported refined sugar.
The conflict with the Netherlands also meant that Belgium wanted to get its own connections to Germany. For this it pressed the construction of railways. One of the first was the line from Leuven to Tienen, which opened on 22 September 1837. The railways would become very important for the growth of Tienen as a center for sugar production and other industries.
In 1837 the colossal Waterloo sugar factory opened, supported by the Belgian haute finance.
Predecessor companies
On 16 May 1836 the municipality of Tienen issued two permits to operate a sugar factory. The requests had been made by Jozef Van den Berghe de Binckum and Pierre-Antoine Vanden Bossche.
The factory founded by Van den Berghe de Binckum would become the nucleus of the Raffinerie Tirlemontoise. It was built near the Begijnhof along the Borggracht. It started to operate on 18 November 1836 and then had 90 employees. The company also cultivated the required sugar beet. In April 1838 the factory concluded trials between different methods of slicing sugar beet. In the early years production was about 10 sacks of raw sugar per day. In 1844 the Van den Berghe factory had 4 atm high pressure steam engine(s) of 10 hp. On 3 November 1847 four employees of the sugar factory of Mr. Vandenberghe de Binckum got a gold medal for their courage during a fire that hit the Vandenberghe factory. In 1855 Joseph Vandenbergh de Binckom sold his factory to Henri Vinckenbosch.