While our main focus is on the women who worked for Tate & Lyle, we are always happy to hear stories from male workers – past and present – as well. Last year, at an event at the Houses of Parliament to celebrate 140 years of cane refining at the Thames Refinery in Silvertown, we met Alan Mead, who has the distinction of having worked for the company for more than half a century.

Alan started worked at Thames Refinery on 7 September 1964, on a three-year apprenticeship programme. The first year was spent on day work, learning about quality control measures in place throughout the factory. Then for years two and three he went on shift, alternating between 6am-2pm, 2pm-10pm and – most gruelling of all – 10pm-6am.

During those two years Alan had to learn the ropes of pretty much every job in the factory. Some of them were less than appealing – crawling through seemingly endless boiler tubes in search of corrosion, or digging out the 10-tonne char cisterns.  (This last activity took place in 50-degree heat, and was performed in a uniform consisting of nothing more than a loincloth – plus regulation boots.)

After his three years as an apprentice were complete, Alan was given a role as a shift analyst and gradually worked his way up the ranks. In 1977, after 13 years at the factory, he was promoted to Shift Chemist, and the following year, when Thames Refinery celebrated its centenary, he was asked to lead the tour groups around the factory.

In 1981, Alan began the first of a series of international adventures on behalf of Tate & Lyle, when he was sent to help commission new refineries in Pakistan and Mindanao in the Philippines. Subsequent trips would take him to Algeria, Belize, China, Guyana, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland and more. But it was after his official retirement in 1998 that he embarked on his most significant trip abroad. One day after he had handed back his lab coat at Thames Refinery, Alan accepted a role with Tate & Lyle Process Technology in Bromley, working on a rolling two-year contract.  A year later, they sent him on a sales trip to Vietnam, where he met the company’s South East Asia agent – and subsequently married her!

Today, Alan is back on site at Thames, working for Tate & Lyle Sugars.  As he put it, ‘I have worked all round the world, but my heart and my home has always been at Thames Refinery.’