Tate & Lyle's specialist priority

The board says it can afford to maintain the dividend at 28p a share for the 2017 year-end - a valid concern for investors after net debt jumped from £353m to £504m in the 12 months to the end of March. The increase was down to a combination of lower earnings, investment in the special food ingredients division and existing dividend commitments. Tate also had to contend with a negative currency impact of £46m.

From now on, speciality food ingredients are going to be Tate & Lyle's priority. The group has agreed to exit its European bulk ingredients joint venture with Archer Daniels Midland Company - netting €240m (£172m) in the process - and will concentrate, instead, on expanding into a potentially more lucrative section of the market. Mr Hampton said the group wanted to move in tandem with "emerging health and wellness trends" as consumers increasingly demand dietary ingredients which claim to tackle diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

Commodity prices - specifically sugar - have been hitting Tate & Lyle hard. Tate's Splenda sucralose division struggled last year, with adjusted operating profits down 73 per cent at just £16m. But the Splenda division will be streamlined over the coming years and manufacturing centralised into a single production facility in McIntosh, Alabama from early 2016. This means closing the Singapore factory, but management says it hopes the Splenda division can break even by the end of the current financial year before turning a profit in 2017.

Consensus estimates put EPS at 36.8p for the current financial year, compared with 36.1p in the year to March 2015.