This was the dense industrial landscape entered by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, building its sugar refinery in 1875. Refining began in 1877, producing sugar, molasses and syrup. So well placed was the refinery with its deep water port facilities, and so well managed, that CSR could acquire and manage plantations in Fiji, northern New South Wales and Queensland, becoming (by the early twentieth century) effectively the monopsonistic producer of sugar for Australia and New Zealand.

For more information, visit the Pyrmont History website.