Old Photograph Roxburgh Street Sugar Refinery Greenock Scotland

Old photograph of the demolition of the Roxburgh Street Sugar Refinery in Greenock by Glasgow, Scotland. Greenock has no claim to be regarded as a pioneer in sugar refining. For over a hundred years previous to its introduction to the town the industry had been established in England, Ireland, and some other parts of Scotland. The first sugar works in Glasgow were started in 1667, but manufacturing had to some extent been going on elsewhere in the country earlier than 1655, in which year an Act was passed imposing an ad valorem duty of 5 per cent. on exportation. In the middle of the seventeenth century there were about fifty refineries in England. Sugar was being smuggled into Scotland from the Continent, refined from the raw brought from the West Indies to France, Portugal, Holland, etc., and it is recorded that although the West Indian growers were offered special privileges by the Government to send the cargoes to the home markets they persisted in their policy of dealing most extensively with the Continent in the hope of getting higher prices. In the matter of evading the Customs duties Scotland at this period held an unenviable prominence in respect of sugar, large quantities finding their way into the country by means of the smuggler.

Trade between the Clyde and the 'West Indies began about 1732, but by 1775 the total sugar imports did not amount to more than 4,000 tons, of which, a very small proportion went to Greenock or Port-Glasgow. Glasgow merchants were concerned in the earliest Greenock refineries, and the first considerable works were situated at the foot of Sugarhouse Lane and opened in 1765. The site is now occupied by the Brewers' Sugar Company (which in turn is about to give way before the shipyard extension of Harland & Wolff). While there is no absolute proof available, it is believed that one or two small refineries had existed prior to that date. A second refinery followed in 1788, at the head of Sugarhouse Lane, but it ceased long ago to be used for this purpose and is now a workingmen's lodging-house. The third was built in 1803 in Bogle Street, and to-day is the property of the Caledonian Railway Company. By the beginning of the nineteenth century Greenock had made a distinct advance in the industry, which promised great expansion.
The West Indies was then practically the only source of cane, this country's supplies, and these Colonies had all but a monopoly of the home markets. In 18I3 one convoy brought thirteen vessels to Greenock, in 1814 the Leeward Islands fleet numbered seventy-one, and in the same year the Jamaica fleet twenty-one. Other than the West Indies, Mauritius was the first to follow with supplies, which with more or less regularity went on from 1828. The East India Company monopolies greatly restricted refiners out of London, but when these were withdrawn in 1834 the imports from Manila and the East Indies were much augmented, until in 1854 they reached 50,000 tons, in 1860 75,000 tons, and in 1865 136,000 tons. By the middle of the century there was no town in the Empire out of London, carrying on the trade so extensively. In the decade 1842-52 the industry was marked by a very rapid increase in the quantity consumed in the United Kingdom, and Clyde refineries more than kept pace with this greater consumption. While in 1843 this was upwards of 200,000 tons, equal to 16.54 lbs per head of the population, Greenock district was producing only 6.55 per cent; in 1852, with a consumpt of 360,000 tons. it was producing 11.06 lbs out of 29.14 Ibs. per head; and in 1872 with 715,000 tons consumpt, 29.20 Ibs out of 50.47 Ibs.
In 1852 the refineries of Greenock were employing 700 men and turning out 50,000 tons annually, and it was then the largest depot for raw material in the kingdom. Twenty years later there were fourteen or fifteen large refineries in operation producing about a quarter of a million tons annually, giving employment to thousands of hands, filling the harbours with ships of all nations with the raw material from every sugar-growing region of the world. Spanish ships from Cuba, Dutchmen from Java, the Newfoundland fleet from Brazil, Glasgow traders from the West Indies and Mauritius, and coasting steamers from France and Belgium with cargoes of the beetroot that was beginning to come into the market.

In the early Seventies three causes were said to have been at work to destroy the profits of the refiners - competition amongst themselves, with other British ports, and with the foreigners and their bounties, and the consequent stoppage of works after the Budget of 1873, led to a falling-off in the output, to the extent of upwards of 12,000 tons. In 1879 it was stated that the trade had been operated upon by a variety of influences of so depressing a kind as almost to point in the direction of its abandonment by many of the refiners, and to threaten its extinction as a leading industry of the town. Those influences included French bounties, large shipments from America of cube and granulated loaf sugar, etc. It was remarked also that rather frequently during the preceding five or six years the crushed market had been unnecessarily weighted by anxiety on the part of refiners not to be outdone by their neighbours in the extent of their output. Eleven refineries were at this time at work, and the total weekly output about 5,000 tons.

Beetroot, which was fated to have a disastrous effect on Greenock refineries, was first imported to the Clyde in small quantities about 1855, and in 1858 the first cargo, a small one, arrived at Greenock. So long as the raw beet sugar was imported, it was our Colonies that were the sufferers, but when the white sugar began to arrive in yearly increasing quantities for home consumption the imports bore heavily upon our refineries. There naturally ensued a steady downward tendency of British exports and a corresponding upward tendency on the Continent, which process of inversion went on without break for many years. Year by year the quantity had increased, consisting principally of French and Belgian, with a small proportion of Austrian sugar, until in 1873 the importation amounted to 40.000 tons. At the opening of the nineteenth century Scotland had used no sugars worth speaking of that did not come from the West India Colonies; at the close of the hundred years the average from that source was a little over one per cent., or 2,358 tons against 203,699. Java, Surinam, and the more distant countries supplied a much larger percentage, but the Continental countries grew to be our greatest sources of supplies.

The duties on sugar were abolished in 1874, and there was no duty for 27 years thereafter. An increased consumption naturally followed, and so greatly were Greenock refineries affected that in 1881 the meltings were 260,299 tons, the largest figure they have ever reached. Of this, no less than, 100,000 tons were beetroot sugars, principally from Germany, while of 220,000 tons melted in 1890 213,000 tons were largely German, the remaining 7000 tons having come from Java. It was the Glebe Refining Company , who in 1891 offered the first strong practical opposition to the flood of beetroot, and so skilfully was the assault conducted that Messrs Kerr's cane sugar enterprise became a brilliant success.

For several years more refiners in general were having an anxious time through the redoubled effort of Germany, which was now exporting large quantities of refined and consequently causing a diminution in Greenock meltings. Fortunately the crusade of Mr Joseph Chamberlain and his allies against the bounty system was drawing to a successful issue, and in March, 1902, the Brussels Convention unanimously resolved that they should cease. An additional factor in favour of British refiners was introduced - when in 1901 Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, imposed an average duty of 3s 6d per cwt. in order to meet the payment of the Boer War, and the lucky possessors of large stocks enjoyed an addition to capital that had been impoverished during the unprofitable years. The growers of cane sugar, too, were now greatly, encouraged in extensions of their cultivation, so that soon their cargoes were coming into the British markets and, owing to cheapness of production, successfully competing with the beetroot.
Broadly speaking, the decline of the Greenock sugar refining industry synchronised with the development of the Continental bounty system, and its more recent revival dates from the abolition of the bounties by the Brussels Convention, ratified in 1902, the actual abolition taking place on September 1, 1903. The bounties had a most disastrous effect on the entire trade of the United Kingdom. Greenock saw many sugar houses lying idle and others working but intermittently. Of eleven refineries working twenty years earlier more than half were compelled to close their doors. The general trade of Greenock was in a bad state, and there naturally was a great reduction in the harbour revenues. The ratification of the Brussels Convention paved the way for a better state of things. Trade at the harbours revived, and refiners faced the situation with renewed confidence. Although greatly reduced in numbers, the refineries remaining are now able to turn out a greater quantity of refined than in the most prosperous days of the nineteenth century.

From the beginning of the war the trade was under Government control. Supplies from the Continent were necessarily stopped, and in the face of enormous freight difficulties and the dangers involved in transport the Sugar Commission succeeded in delivering the raw article from America and the Colonies, and the refineries were enabled to continue melting on a large scale. The output in Greenock during those years were : 1915 - 229,689 tons; 1916 - 221,512 tons; 1917 - 237,185 tons; 1918 - 236,521 tons; 1919 - 259,000 tons; and in 1920 - 216,907, a reduction owing to coal strike and other labour troubles. The total of 1919 has only once been exceeded, in 1881. In the House of Commons in 1921 the Burgh Member, Sir Godfrey P. Collins, supported a clause to reduce the sugar duty from 2 3/4d to 1 1/2d per lb., on the ground that the tax was a thoroughly bad and vicious one, because it was a tax on both food and raw material. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that the result of acceptance of the clause in the Finance Bill would be a reduced revenue in that year of £9,500,000, and in the full year of £15,000,000, and that he could not afford to lose that.

Greenock Sugar Exchange was erected in 1857 by Mr William Anderson. In 1866 the Clyde Crushed Sugar Dealers Association was formed to foster and increase the trade of the Clyde, to act as a medium of reference between refiners and dealers, to arrange for the sampling, weighing, and forwarding, and to publish a daily report of the market. The Beetroot Association was instituted in 1882, the name was changed to the Sugar Association of Greenock, and in 1916 to the Raw Sugar Association of Greenock, Limited.

Members of many Greenock families identified with the sugar refining, after having helped to establish the industry in their native town, sought wider fields for their energies, making both fortune and name in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere. Those prominent at home have now passed out of the trade through death or retiral - three generations of Richardson, Steele, Anderson, Wrede, Currie, Patten, Scott, Orr and many besides.



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