Qualla: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:33 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise Raffinerie Tirlemontoise: Introduction https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise/ Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sugar in Belgium starts with a blockade. In 1807, Napoleon's Continental System cut Europe off from British shipping, including the Caribbean sugarcane that European refiners had built their industry on. France scrambled for a substitute, and a plant called Beta vulgaris altissima, the sugar beet, turned out to contain enough sucrose to matter. Twenty-nine years after the blockade, on the same May day in 1836, the small Belgian town of Tienen issued two permits for sugar factories. One of them, founded by Jozef Van den Berghe de Binckum, eventually grew into the Raffinerie Tirlemontoise, the firm still synonymous with Belgian sugar a hundred and ninety years later. It now produces under the German Sudzucker group, and it still bears its 1887 name — a name chosen in 1887 precisely because the company was then one of only a dozen Belgian sugar refiners, a distinction that became meaningless once every beet factory learned to refine its own product.

Read more: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise on Qualla

Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/u159-raffinerie-tirlemontoise-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Raffinerie Tirlemontoise: Two permits, one day https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise/ Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 16 May 1836 the Tienen municipality granted operating licenses to two would-be sugar makers. Pierre-Antoine Vanden Bossche opened his factory on Gilainstraat the same day. Van den Berghe opened his six months later, on 18 November, near the Begijnhof with 90 employees and the ...

Read more: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise on Qualla

Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/u159-raffinerie-tirlemontoise-two-permits-one-day.mp3 0:06 2 full Raffinerie Tirlemontoise: Beet exhausts the soil https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise/ Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. Through the company's first decades the sugar question and the agricultural question were inseparable. A sugar beet plant draws hard on the earth, and rotating it intensively without depleting the field was nearly impossible until chemical fertilizers became cheap enough to use w...

Read more: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise on Qualla

Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/u159-raffinerie-tirlemontoise-beet-exhausts-the-soil.mp3 0:06 3 full Raffinerie Tirlemontoise: The Wittouck brothers and the boom https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise/ Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1894 Paul Wittouck and his brother Frans bought the Tienen company. They already owned a sugar factory in Wanze, downriver on the Meuse, and the combination made them dominant in Belgian sugar. Between 1894 and 1913 the volume of sugar produced at Tienen rose from 7,000 tonnes...

Read more: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise on Qualla

Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/u159-raffinerie-tirlemontoise-the-wittouck-brothers-and-the-boom.mp3 0:06 4 full Raffinerie Tirlemontoise: The railways that made everything possible https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise/ Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. None of this growth would have been possible without trains. The line from Leuven to Tienen opened on 22 September 1837, less than a year after the first factories began operations. By 1842 the line stretched to Liege; by 1869, to Namur; by 1879, all across the Hesbaye. Coal from...

Read more: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise on Qualla

Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/u159-raffinerie-tirlemontoise-the-railways-that-made-everything-possible.mp3 0:06 5 full Raffinerie Tirlemontoise: Still here https://qualla.com/raffinerie-tirlemontoise/ Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1989 the German conglomerate Sudzucker bought all the company's shares for about two billion guilders. The sugar business stayed within Sudzucker, while the non-sugar lines like bread, chocolate, and salads were spun off. The Tienen factory still operates, processing up to 12,...

Read more: Raffinerie Tirlemontoise on Qualla

Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/5/9/raffinerie-tirlemontoise-wp/u159-raffinerie-tirlemontoise-still-here.mp3 0:06 6 full