Employees at Tate and Lyle Sugars have been told that leaving Europe would benefit the business and protect their jobs, according to a report.
A letter from one of the company's top bosses said that positions at the firm, one of Britain's oldest, will be safer if operations can move beyond the reach of EU tariffs and restrictions.
Employees will not be told how to vote in the message from senior vice president Gerald Mason, who said the company had been prevented from turning a profit as a result of being in the Union, the BBC reports.
He wrote: "Last year EU restrictions and tariffs pushed our raw material costs up by nearly 40 million euro (£31 million) alone, turning what should have been a good profit that we would all share into a 25 million euro (£19 million) loss.
"We pay as much as 3.5 million euro (£2.7 million) of import tariffs to the European Union on some of the boats of cane sugar that unload at our refinery, only for the European Union to then send that money to subsidise our beet sugar producing competitors in Europe."
Mr Mason blamed a policy in Brussels of favouring sugar beet refiners on the continent over cane refineries for hindering their success and jeopardising jobs.
Read more: Leave campaign claims Brexit will make Scotland 'more sovereign and independent'
"(They said) that if we lose our jobs then that's democracy because there are more beet producers than cane refiners in Europe. That is not the sort of democracy I want to be part of," he wrote.
Tate and Lyle Sugars was founded in 1878 and has operated a sugar refinery on the Thames ever since.
Read more: Iain Macwhirter - What would Brexit really mean for Scotland?
It recently launched the Save Our Sugar campaign, urging the EU to level the playing field among European cane and beet sugar manufacturers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel