Character, Culture Carry Imperial Sugar Forward

Tragedy is a powerful and contradicting force. It can tear down the physical while building up the spiritual. It can collapse buildings while opening new doors of hope and understanding. It can push a company to the brink, only to bring it back better than before.

For the Imperial Sugar Company, “before” came one evening in February 2008, when an explosion and fire tore through the company’s sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia. The refinery had been in operation for nearly a century. In many ways, the tragedy transformed the company, ushering in large-scale change while preserving the best of its past.

The Port Wentworth facility is known as the Savannah Sugar Refinery, built along the river that bears its name. Until the disaster, the refinery had produced about 60 percent of the company’s capacity, supplying approximately eight percent of the nation’s refined sugar.

About 700 miles away in Gramercy, Louisiana, is located Imperial Sugar’s second refinery. More than a century old, people there refer to the operations as the Colonial Sugar Refinery. It is set against a backdrop of small homes, sugar cane fields and the ever-so-close Mississippi River, kept at bay by an earthen levee.

At its headquarters, too, in Sugar Land, Texas, the name Imperial simply means sugar, with more than 150 years of history and tradition behind it.

While all part of the same company on paper, Port Wentworth, Gramercy and Sugar Land were really three separate worlds unto themselves before the refinery explosion. To be sure, they worked with each other to get the job of making and selling sugar done. But when tragedy struck, the three became one like never before.

They bonded in ways no one could foresee, coming together in sorrow, prayer, healing and a shared sense of purpose and renewal. They became nothing less than a business born again.

At the dedication earlier this year of Legacy Park, a memorial erected at the Port Wentworth site to honor the 14 employees who died, Imperial Sugar’s chief executive John Sheptor said: “We are rebuilding for the future. With God’s help, your courage and this community’s support, we will forge ahead.”

This feeling of rebuilding and rebirth prevails throughout the company today. It’s readily apparent when talking with employees as they finish the $200+ million reconstruction of the Savannah Sugar Refinery. It is there as employees package and ship products from Colonial Sugar, where they took on the burden of producing for both refineries over the past 15 months. And, this feeling is ever-present at the company’s corporate offices.

Personal sacrifices made on the job and at home – far too many to mention here – have not gone unnoticed by families, friends and co-workers, as well as community, civic and business leaders.

Gloria Knight works in customer service on the industrial side of the business in Sugar Land. Compared with employees whose families have given generations to the company, Knight is a relative newcomer, with three years on the job. She started with the company in 2006.

Reflecting on all that’s happened, Knight puts it in the simplest of terms: “When we did our prayer circle, we were praying not only for the ones in the (Augusta) burn center and their families to help them through, but also for those that were giving of their time and their family to make sure that my family ate.”

Knight, who attended the memorial service, believes the tragedy has bonded the company together “to become more of a family. Because people here (in Sugar Land) were praying for people there (in Port Wentworth). We were praying for the people in Gramercy because they were taking on more of the slack and the work. They were working like seven days a week. They were making sure this company survived.”

Surviving is hard enough to do for any company in good times – let alone to keep going in the face of a disaster amid this Great Recession. Yet, that is what Imperial Sugar has done – while keeping everyone on the payroll at Port Wentworth, servicing hundreds of existing customers and expanding its business across the U.S. and into Mexico.

In business, it is often said the essence of any company comes down to its culture and the character of people who work there. Such strengths are reflected in its leaders and employees – as witnessed by their behavior and in their actions. True character and a culture of caring and commitment are obvious for all to see.