BRITISH SUGAR PLC, SPROUGHTON ROAD, IPSWICH

The main element in these records is a series of forty 'Campaign Books' covering the years 1928-1968, which are of great value in that they contain full details of sugar production during the period. The collection also includes a refining book for beet imported from Poland in 1939; volumes of Laboratory quality control test results 1965-1968; wages and rates of pay books together covering the years 1925-1957; three site plans, 1925-1988; a small quantity of publicity material 1986-c. 1990; thirty-nine photographs of the factory premises and equipment 1924-1988; and a history of the works [1924-1988] by J. Langford), 1988. No financial records are included.

The Ipswich factory - one of the rash of beet producing plants to be built after the First World War, encouraged by the 1925 Sugar Industry (Subsidy) Act - was built in 1924-25 by the Anglo-Dutch Sugar Company on a 100-acre site with good railway links at Sproughton. The main contractors were Hal Williams and Co. Much of the original machinery was second-hand, dismantled from a factory in Holland and shipped to Felixstowe. The Anglo-Dutch group was the largest of five which built factories in the 1920s; the Company also had factories in Cantley (Norfolk), Kelham (Nottinghamshire), Ely and King's Lynn. Initially the management was Dutch. In 1936 the British Sugar Corporation was formed, and this and other factories were absorbed.