British sugar refiner and sweetener maker Tate & Lyle said first-quarter pretax profit was ahead of its expectations as it reaped the benefits from a series of cost-cutting measures.

Tate & Lyle, once the world's biggest sugar refiner, said, although its outlook was unclear in the short term, it had made a better-than-anticipated start to the year with demand from food and beverage customers remaining resilient.

"The encouraging start to the year should support the shares, particularly given the modest valuation," said RBS analyst Julian Hardwick.

Tate & Lyle, which makes sucralose sweetener Splenda, had undertaken a range of cost reduction initiatives in response to "challenging and unpredictable" market conditions.

The measures included more than six hundred jobs being axed across the world, equivalent to around 10 percent of its workforce. In addition, the company shut down some plants and initiated a pay freeze at all levels along with a "wide-ranging review of discretionary expenditure".

Tate & Lyle said first-quarter pretax profit from continuing operations before exceptional items would be in line with the comparative period in 2008.

The company also said it expects a satisfactory performance in the second quarter, although the results are not expected to match those of the same period in 2008, which benefited from a peak in commodity prices.

The company said demand from food and beverage customers was stable and profits from value-added ingredients had continued to grow. It said sucralose traded above its expectations but demand for industrial starches had been weak.

www.reuters.com/article/rbssHouseholdProducts/idUSLM33857020090723