Tate & Lyle's International Strategy

Paper Summary:

This paper relates the rationale behind Tate & Lyle's (T&L) international expansion strategy but goes on to show how it was fundamentally flawed. The paper discusses how T&L failed to seize an opportunity on the starch side of the business, and their shortsightedness left them unable to capitalize on the sucralose opportunity to its fullest potential. The paper also examines the lessons learned from this case and shows how they can be applied to other firms.

From the Paper:

"They also did not consider other important factors. They did not consider what, besides the theoretically reduction in risk, they were getting from their expansion. Such an expansion should be undertaken with the objective of either adding value or gaining sustainable advantage. Even had they maneuver succeeded in reducing risk, it did neither of the other two. None of the acquisitions had proprietary technology that T&L could leverage, nor did T&L bring any discernable improvements to the operations of the various acquisitions that would have made the purchases worthwhile."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Porter, Michael E. 1980 Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. Free Press, New York.
• Vermeulen, Freek. 2001 'Controlling International Expansion.' Business Strategy Review Vol. 12 Issue 3 pp29-36.
• Reynolds, Scott & Hatfield, Alcinda 1996 'Shanghai's Rising Tide of Consumerism Means Food Export Opportunities' AgExporter. [online] available at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3723/is_n7_v8/ai_19161841
• Gamble, Jos & Huang, Qihai 2007 Multinational Retailers in the Asia Pacific. [online] available at: http://www.consume.bbk.ac.uk/research/gamble.html
• http://www.sucralose.com/uk/index.php

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