The company has been headquartered in Sugar Land since its inception. The city itself is named for the company and the company's crown logo is featured in the city's seal. The company was founded in 1843 by
Samuel May Williams and passed through a series of owners until its purchase in 1907 by the
I. H. Kempner family of
Galveston. The company was later renamed the Imperial Sugar Company, in an effort to emphasize quality. Up until 1988 the company had only one plant, at its original location in Texas, when they purchased the
Holly Sugar Corporation, a
sugar beet processor headquartered in
Colorado Springs. At that time Imperial Sugar Company became Imperial Holly Corporation and began publicly trading on
Nasdaq. Since the merger with Holly, the company made several more acquisitions that greatly enlarged the company during the 1980s and 1990s, including
Michigan Sugar and the
Spreckels Sugar Company. However, the company's name returned to Imperial Sugar Company in 1999. In 2005, it sold Holly Sugar Corporation (which included Spreckels Sugar) to the
Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative (SMBSC). However, Imperial retained the trademark to the Holly Sugar brand, and SMBSC rebranded Holly Sugar Corporation to Spreckels Sugar Company. In 2010, Imperial exchanged its aging nineteenth-century
Gramercy, Louisiana refinery to Louisiana Sugar Refiners, LLC (LSR) for a one-third interest in the new company. LSR commenced operations on . Imperial continues to operate a small-bag processing facility at Gramercy.
2008 explosion On , an explosion at a
Port Wentworth, Georgia, sugar refinery killed 14 people and injured more than 40. It was likely caused by an overheated bearing on a conveyor beneath the sugar silos, which ignited sugar dust, then spread in a chain reaction of sugar dust explosions in the finished-sugar packaging area of the plant.
OSHA had been criticized in a 2006
U.S. Chemical Safety Board report for lack of preparation for such explosions and a safety program that "inadequately addresses dust explosion hazards". As of August 26, 2008, the death toll had risen to 14, with one still in critical condition. The plant, originally built as the
Dixie Crystals sugar refinery in 1916–1917, had been acquired by Imperial Sugar in 1997. At the time of its purchase, the Port Wentworth refinery was the second-largest sugar refining operation in the U.S.
Acquisition by Louis Dreyfus Group On 1 May 2012,
Louis Dreyfus Commodities LLC announced that one of its subsidiaries would acquire all outstanding Imperial Sugar stock for $6.35 per share and assume $125 million in Imperial Sugar debt. The price per share represented a 57% premium over Imperial Sugar's closing price on 30 April. A spokesman for Dreyfus group said the acquisition was part of the company's efforts to expand into refining and distribution of sugar.
Acquisition by U.S. Sugar In November 2021,
US Sugar and Imperial Sugar announced their intentions to
merge the two companies. They were sued by the
US Department of Justice who claimed in a statement that the deal was
anticompetitive and would “leave an overwhelming majority of refined sugar sales across the Southeast in the hands of only two producers”. Imperial Sugar and US Sugar stated that they disagreed with the
antitrust lawsuit and that they fully intended to litigate. US Sugar completed the $315 million purchase of Imperial in November 2022. On July 13, 2023, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected the U.S. government's claim that the merger violated antitrust and refused to undo the merger. ==Gallery==