Ragus: 95 years manufacturing pure sugars on Slough Trading Estate
Ragus Sugars has been a part of Slough Trading Estate’s history since 1928. During that time, the company has seen four generations of the Eastick family making pure sugar products in Slough. The modern Ragus manufactures and delivers pure sugar products to leading household brands around the world.
The Ragus journey begins in 1880
We can trace the origins of Ragus back to 1880, when Charles Eastick, the great-grandfather of the current generation of the Eastick family making sugar products, started a sugar chemistry laboratory in London with his brother John Joseph. In 1883, Charles invented the famous household staple Lyle’s Golden Syrup, and continued to run sugar factories throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1928, Fruit Products launches a 95-year journey
Charles’ passion for innovation, a trait the family has retained to the present day, led to him establishing a factory on the then new Slough Trading Estate, as Fruit Products Ltd. The company made specialist sugars and, as the name suggests, fruit cordials and candied peel for the exclusive department stores. In 1930, Ragus Sugars was established, manufacturing innovative invert sugars a sweeter, moist sugars that are used by bakers, brewers and confectioners. Invert sugar was the inspiration for the name – Ragus is ‘sugar’ back-to-front - or inverted. This factory was the precursor to the modern facility you see today.
How Ragus evolved into today’s industrial manufacturer
During the rest of the 20th century and noughties, the company continued to grow at the Bedford Avenue site, supplying an increasing range of sugars to customers around the world. By 2010, the original factory in Bedford Avenue had reached capacity and could no longer meet demand. In 2012, a modern state-of-the-art factory was commissioned for construction on the current site, in Yeovil Road.
A history still in the making
Throughout the 2010s and up to the present day, the factory has expanded to allow greater capacity for manufacturing the crystalline sugars and sugar syrups, such as treacle, molasses and golden syrup, in industrial quantities. An average day sees dozens of 30,000 litre road tankers delivering raw sugars and distributing finished pure sugar products to customers throughout Europe and within the UK.
Ragus products can be found in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical products produced by the world’s leading household brands, as well as in emerging brands in the UK’s brewing, confectionary, baking and dessert industries.