Imperial Sugar in Collaborative Global Partnerships

Ed Makin (L), President and CEO of Lantic Sugar, is taken on a tour of Imperial Sugar's state-of-the-art sugar packaging facility at Port Wentworth, Ga., by John Sheptor, President and CEO of Imperial Sugar.

Imperial Sugar Company is continuing to expand its global network of collaboration with technical exchanges on-going with Lantic Inc. in Canada, British Sugar in the United Kingdom, and Pfeifer & Langen in Germany.   These relationships have developed as regional sugar companies have found value in sharing knowledge with a producer in another world region.  Imperial Sugar Company initiated conversations with each based upon an interest to share best practices for sugar dust risk mitigation. From this beginning, broad technical discussions have ensued leading to substantive conversations.

“I am pleased with the open dialogues that have been developed between our companies.  Imperial is an active participant in the global industry through raw sugar and organic sweetener procurement.  The addition of refining and product development collaboration broadens our global reach and strengthens our technical base,” says John Sheptor, President and CEO of Imperial Sugar Company.

“We have invited the global industry to share best practices regarding combustible dust and these new relationships have been built upon a common commitment to worker safety.  I look forward to other global leaders to step forward to share what they have learned and know.”

To ensure that it is operating at the cutting edge, ISC plans to continue to exchange technical data and processes with each company. Reciprocal expert visits have been initiated and much has already been learned.

“These technical exchanges bring strength to our company, because we’re able to benchmark against other industry leaders,” says Thomas Rathke, senior director engineering and business development. “We can benchmark each other’s plants, looking at safety programs, energy usage, water consumption, control systems, maintenance approaches and so on.”

Thomas Rathke, senior director engineering and business development, Imperial Sugar Company.

ISC reached out to these three partners for a reason: Lantic Inc. is a market leader in Canada; Pfeifer is a highly prominent player in the Central and Eastern European markets; while British Sugar is a top supplier to the U.K., with large holdings in Africa and Asia.

The exchange begins with a visit by leadership to the international site, and soon after, a technical team follows to delve into the details. In those follow-up visits, for example, an engineering expert from ISC talks directly to his counterpart at Lantic, British Sugar and Pfeifer & Langen.

“The working-level discussions between experts — that’s the starting gun, where you really get things done,” Rathke says.

After benchmarking comes a gap analysis, in which both companies examine how well they perform versus the experience of the other.  With this scorecard in hand, the technical experts are in a position to focus on areas of most relevance to each company.

Pfeifer & Langen sugar facility in Euskirchen, Germany.

“We’ll ask ourselves whether we might change something in our own system to reach that better performance,” Rathke says. “In any given workplace, it is often difficult to let go of traditional appoaches. By going through this process, you can refocus, look at something a new way, and learn from one another.”

On the core technical team from ISC are Rathke, Robert Burch from the process engineering team, and Darrell Gerdes from the product development team.

In Rathke’s mind, it all boils down to this question: Why reinvent the wheel?

“When you have strong global partners, you shouldn’t have to reinvent,” he says. Instead, by sharing lessons about operational excellence, you can ultimately jointly gain improved workplace safety, efficiency and cost improvement.