In 1859 Tate became interested in the sugar business and became the partner of John Wright, a sugar refiner in Liverpool.

Two years later he sold his shops and opened his own refinery at Love Lane, Liverpool. 

He soon decided to break the partnership and set up his own company Henry Tate & Sons. 

He built a larger refinery and introduced new machines to make the sugar cleaner. 

He was a great innovator - always looking for new ideas to make better sugar. 

He was so successful he wanted to make the business bigger so travelled to London and built the Thames Refinery. In the first year 214 tonnes of raw sugar were refined. 

He bought the Langen patent and started to use a new process to make sugar into cubes, prior to this it was made in loaves which needed to broken into smaller pieces.