Tereos

In 1932, the Origny cooperative distillery was founded in the Aisne department of northern France by a number of farmers under the leadership of Paul Cavenne. The factory processed 400 tonnes of sugar beet per day. About twenty years later, Jean Duval, managing director of the cooperative, converted the distillery into a sugar factory, which was able to process 900 tonnes of sugar per day.

In the 1990s, the Origny cooperative merged with that of Vic-sur-Aisne, which operate a sugar plant that handled 5,500 tonnes of sugar beet per day. The new entity was named SDA (Sucreries et Distilleries de l’Aisne). A year later, it acquired the Berneuil sugar factory in south-western France.

The acquisition of the leading French sugar producer, Béghin-Say from the Italian company Edison, in 2002 marked a turning-point. The combination of the two companies made the new cooperative group a French market leader with 9,500 cooperative growers. Tereos was born.

In 2006 Tereos merged with the cooperative group SDHF (Sucreries et Distilleries des Hauts de France). This extended the Group's business and strengthened its leadership on the French market.

In 2008 Tereos acquires, via subsidary Syral, 5 starch and glucose factories in West-Europe from Talfiie (Tate & Lyle Food & Industrial Ingredients Europe), subsidary of the company Tate & Lyle.[1]

2016 saw the Connantre sugar beet cooperative (Tereos Group) join forces with the cooperative, APM Déshy, allowing Tereos to expand its business into alfalfa processing, with four dehydration plants in north-eastern France (in Anglure, Aulnay-aux-Planches, Montépreux and Pleurs).

Tereos SCA was created in 2018. The 12,000 cooperative grows now all belong to a single cooperative. This simplified, modernised organisation will strengthen the efficiency of the cooperative group and its ability to respond to changes in its environment.

The Tereos product portfolio covers the markets of food, animal feed, green chemistry, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, paper and cardboard, and energies. Tereos is permanently expanding its agricultural, industrial and commercial networks to provide its customers with the same commitment to quality, traceability and sustainability on every market on which it operates and throughout the entire value chain. A total of 75% of the raw materials processed by Tereos are certified sustainable.

In recent years Tereos has been mired in controversy after several news reports highlighted the company's involvement in a number of dubious events. In 2019, a complaint was filed against the firm for allegedly supplying an artificial sweetener to Syria, where it is being used to make weapons. In 2020 the region of Wallonia accused the company of a leak in its sugar beet refinery, causing 50-70 tonnes of fish to die in the Belgian territory.[2]