The company whose headquarters is located in Tienen (Belgium) has four business units: sugar activities, Orafti, Surafti and PPE, which together employ more than 1,800 people.

[1] Judging by the name 'Raffinerie Tirlemontoise', one would expect that the company also operates a sugar refinery, but that is not the case.

In spite of now possessing one of the best harbors of Europe, the Belgians did not gain access to a source of cheap raw cane sugar.

In turn they protected their domestic refineries by a high tariff on imported refined sugar.

[6] In 1837 the colossal Waterloo sugar factory opened, supported by the Belgian haute finance.

The requests had been made by Jozef Van den Berghe de Binckum and Pierre-Antoine Vanden Bossche.

[7] The factory founded by Van den Berghe de Binckum would become the nucleus of the Raffinerie Tirlemontoise.

[10] In April 1838 the factory concluded trials between different methods of slicing sugar beet.

In 1844 the Van den Berghe factory had 4 atm high pressure steam engine(s) of 10 hp.

[8] The factory founded by Pierre-Antoin Vanden Bossche and his business partner Jean-Joseph Janssens was on Gilainstraat.

[7] In 1844, the sugar factory of the Brothers Janssens and Mr. Vandenbosche had 4 atm high pressure steam engine(s) of 10 hp.

[12] In 1882 the sugar factory of the Van den Bossche brothers and Janssens was on the Rue de Diest.

He would leave the cultivation of sugar beet to independent farmers and concentrate on the development of the industrial components of the company.

[16] On 17 September 1887 Edmond Vinckenbosch founded the public company La Raffinerie Tirlemontoise.

[21][22] In January 1888 Finance minister Auguste Beernaert and officials from his ministry visited the company.

In 1894 they took over Vinckenbosch & Cie, owner of the sugar refinery of Tienen, and turned it into a limited company.

[24] The brothers faced fierce competition from other sugar manufacturers in Belgium, but emerged as the dominant firm.

[25] However, due to the continued international overproduction the situation of the sugar industry remained difficult until the end of World War II.

The horizontal type of rotating continuous diffuser is named "RT" after Raffinerie Tirlemontoise.

The non-sugar activities (bread, chocolate, salades) were acquired by Raffinaderij Tienen (RT) Holding NV in Rotterdam.

[29] In 2001 Südzucker used its daughter Raffinerie Tirlemontoise to buy Saint Louis Sucre in a complex deal.

[30] In 2002 RT sold its 68% share in the Veurne Sugar Factory to the Groep Warcoing, which already owned the other 32%.

It was one of the conditions the European Commission set for approving the acquisition of Saint Louis Sucre.

Coal from Wallonia was cheap, because it only had to be transported by wagon from the station in Tienen to the sugar factories.

This was costly, but it still meant a big increase in the area from which it was economical to transport beet to the factory.

[6] This was very important, because sugar factories would require ever costlier machinery, and this could only be paid for by operating on a very large scale.