John Sheptor: An Ending and A Beginning

John Sheptor, CEO and President, Imperial Sugar Company

In a ceremony to mark resumption of operations at Imperial Sugar’s newly rebuilt sugar refinery at Port Wentworth, GA, the company’s Chief Executive Officer and President John Sheptor delivered the following remarks before associates, members of the community and the media:

I would like for all of us to recognize Brian Harrison and Dwayne Zeigler for their dedicated leadership of this project. They have worked countless hours, weekend after weekend and expertly overseen the construction of one of the most modern and safest sugar refineries in the world. We have much to thank them for. Please join me in a round of applause.

Please also stand and be recognized if you also have worked on the Station F or the bulk station rebuild. Thank you for a job well done.

Today is both an ending and a beginning.

We end today Port Wentworth’s absence from industrial channel sales, the silence from our crippled refinery, empty truck gates and empty rail tracks, refinery operations insurance claims and zeros on our production ledgers.

Our competitors told our customers that we did not have the will to rebuild or the fortitude to continue. Looking around us, it is obvious that they were wrong! Dixie Crystals brand is stronger than ever and more prepared to compete than they have seen before. We did not let our loyal customers down nor did we ever consider it. We have provided them with quality product and served them with excellence for over 90 years and we will continue to do so for generations to come.

Port Wentworth has always been a wonderful place to work – an employee family. But it hasn’t been perfect as we all know.

I ask you all to make a decision today as you leave this tent area to also end those things that take away from our best – bias that makes differences “wrong” as opposed to an advantage, favoritism, taking advantage for personal gain and giving less than your top effort. These weaknesses from our past do not need to be part of our future if we choose to leave them behind today.

I stand for fair and equitable treatment of every person who enters this site, for a workplace without injuries, for the development of a work culture where everyone has an opportunity to contribute and to personally grow, for shared compensation from the successes of our hard labor and for a company who is valued by its community.

Do you stand with me? Will you embrace a more positive way of working and living with each other?

Some will say that these things can’t be changed so quickly but they sound like those who didn’t believe we would be here today. Choose to be different, choose to look ahead with new eyes and new attitudes and leave in the rubble of the old factory those things that can be changed today. The future culture of this plant depends upon you. It will only have the characteristics that you choose to create or what you drag with you from the past.

What will be the strengths of our new culture?  No injuries, customer service, trust, unity, respect, honor, dedication, hard work, innovation, success, sharing, giving, teaching, learning, growing, building, leading, efficient, quality, excellence. Will you stand where you are to show to your friends and confirm to yourself that you choose this as your future?

We stand together and pledge to each other that we will always do our best, we will help those who stumble and cheer for those who succeed. We will build together in this community a place of honor and respect that will endure beyond our grandchildren. It is up to us and we choose to be better than our past and to be all that we hope is possible. We are committed to be one in purpose and we will succeed together. Nothing will stop what we have begun today. We step into our brilliant new future.

Today is a new beginning for the generations of workers who will follow us. I imagine the emotions of those who constructed the original factory on this site in 1916. Were they considering the 92 years that would be blessed by what they did? How many generations will support their families with high standards of living because of what you have completed in this reconstruction? What wealth will be earned by our shareholders because of the excellence that you have built into this new factory? You have breathed new life into this community and today we will celebrate what we have begun.

Today we start the boilers and begin the process of start up. Ten days from now industrial customers will receive the first sugar from our new facilities. Today we begin to work together with newly defined jobs, new ideas about how to work together developed during our studies at Savannah Technical College. Today we begin production in the safest sugar factory in the world utilizing many new technologies for the first time in the sugar industry,

We are the new sugar factory in Port Wentworth, Georgia and we stand strong together to face an unknown future with impassioned solidarity born through tragedy. I am proud to be a member of this employee family and I rejoice with your success today.

Thank you.

John Sheptor
Port Wentworth
June 16, 2009

WTOC, Savannah, coverage.