Chairman's AGM Statement

At the Annual General Meeting of Tate & Lyle PLC to be held in London today, Sir David Lees, Chairman, will make the following statement on current trading and expansion projects:

“Trading has started strongly in the current financial year. The first quarter’s results were well ahead of those in the corresponding period, excluding the benefit of reduced depreciation (£25 million on an annual basis) arising from the impairment charge of £272 million taken last year. This was due mainly to a continuation of the strong performance from Food & Industrial Ingredients Americas and from sugar trading.

Work on our appropriate response to the changes in the EU Sugar Regime continues.

Across the business we have a number of expansion projects under way which will stimulate longer term growth in our value added segment.

Both of the expansions at the McIntosh, Alabama SPLENDA® Sucralose facility have been completed on time. The first of these is now operating at capacity and the second is in a commissioning period that we expect to last for several months. Construction of the new SPLENDA® Sucralose facility in Singapore remains on schedule for mechanical completion in January 2007. The increased production capacity from these investments will enable us to build further the customer base and SPLENDA® Sucralose brand. We have specifically designed the Singapore plant with the potential for its capacity to be doubled, if required.

Our new joint venture plant with DuPont to produce Bio-PDOTM from renewable resources has also been completed on schedule and is being commissioned. This is a unique plant, the first in the world to produce Bio-PDO, and we expect that commissioning and production ramp up will take some time to complete. We remain excited about the longer term market for Bio-PDO which has potential in markets as diverse as apparel, carpets, automotive and electronics.

Our other US expansion projects in Sagamore and Loudon and the recently announced investment in a new corn-wet mill in Fort Dodge, Iowa continue to progress satisfactorily.

Total investment in these three projects will be some £250 million. This reflects our firm commitment to deliver against our growth strategy and in particular to grow the contribution from value added products.

We continue to view the future with confidence and remain committed to our target for the profit contribution from total value added products to increase by 30% in the year to March 2007 from the £161 million reported last year.”