Dudley (Dutch) J Melancon, Jr., Packaging Superintendent at the Gramercy, La refinery, inspects the new Imperial Sugar railcars before loading with sugar.

For 14 years, Don Gilbert has dreamed of seeing Imperial Sugar Company (ISC) railcars painted a bright “Imperial blue” and sporting the company’s logo. His dream has finally true – along with some new features for customers, too.

Thirty new bulk railcars, manufactured by Trinity Rail Industries, are on their way to the Gramercy, La., and Port Wentworth, Ga., refineries, where they’ll be used for transporting refined sugar by rail to customers. Unlike in years past, this batch of railcars is a distinctive bright blue, not grey, and each has its own Imperial Sugar crown.

“The customer will see these cars arrive at their facility, and they’ll know exactly who it is,” says Gilbert, the company’s director of commodities management and logistics. “The cars are recognizable and memorable.”

Don Gilbert, director of commodities management and logistics for Imperial Sugar.

Beyond the blue finish, which was carefully matched to ISC’s logo, the railcars have features important to many customers receiving bulk products by rail.

For example, a “hatch-and-hatch” system on top of each railcar allows for two openings, one small and one large. When loading a railcar, Imperial can use the smaller opening, reducing the possibility of contamination.

Stainless steel gates on the bottom of the railcars, as well as food-grade lining inside of them, allow the transported sugar to quickly empty out. Those features make it easier for a customer, after receiving a car full of refined sugar, to open the gate and unload.
The number of railcars in Imperial Sugar’s fleet is now just under 600. As the company expands its fleet, Gilbert says, every new railcar will be built with customer-friendly features such as the hatch-and-hatch system, food-grade lining and stainless steel gate.

And, he hopes, they’ll be painted in that same distinctive blue.

Darrell Gerdes, manager of research and new product development for Imperial Sugar Company, inspects a sugar cookie made with SteviaCane.

Like a modern-day Columbo, Darrell Gerdes, manager of research and new product development for Imperial Sugar Company (ISC), spends much of his time troubleshooting, coming up with new ideas and examining the evidence until something “clicks.”

A case in point: Gerdes and an ISC team recently worked with a large commercial customer on a new sugar glaze for the company’s famed glazed doughnuts. The team had not yet gotten the viscosity of the glaze to perform the way they wanted.

“The glaze was giving us a 90 percent performance, but I’m a perfectionist scientist who expects 100 percent performance,” says Gerdes. “We were struggling to figure out why this particular product wasn’t working perfectly. We had changed the formulation, changed the application method and temperature – all sorts of things. It just wasn’t good enough.”

Suddenly, an idea popped into his head: “I thought about the gums in the product, and realized they needed a 24-hour time frame to do their stuff perfectly.” That’s when Gerdes decided to spend three days with the customer, running a test that involved making the glaze, letting it rest for a day, and then applying it to the doughnuts.

“It worked like a champ,” he says.

It’s this sort of scenario that casts Gerdes as a detective of sorts. He says, half-jokingly, “It’s like CSI, except with sugar and sweeteners.”

As a student at Texas A&M, Gerdes originally wanted to be a pediatrician, but soon found himself drawn to food science. After earning his Master’s degree and PhD in food science, he worked as a professor at universities in Texas, Louisiana and California, teaching students and running research centers that conducted research projects for food companies. Eventually, one of those clients lured him to the corporate world.

Gerdes discusses tests on SteviaCane with Imperial's analytical chemist William Kienzle.

After stints at Parrot-Ice and Riviana Foods, Gerdes landed at Imperial Sugar in June 2009. Arriving at the Sugar Land, Texas, headquarters, he recalled touring the site as a Boy Scout and later learning how to drive on Highway 90A, which runs in front of the corporate offices.

What he loves about his role at Imperial Sugar is “creating new stuff and solving problems.” A typical week involves everything from working on new products, to scouring the Internet to read up on the latest food industry trends, to answering questions from customers and consumers.

He says he has three big goals for the year:
One is to launch Steviacane™, a product made from sugar and stevia.

The second is to relaunch Baker’s Supreme with revamped packaging.

And, the third is to develop a tool for online market research, which will be a first foray for Imperial Sugar. “Called a ‘concept screener,’ the online survey will allow us to target consumers by demographic and region and say, ‘Here are our ideas for new products. What do you think?’”

By year-end, Gerdes expects to have targeted market research to help guide him, as well as new ISC products lining retail shelves. He says, “One-hundred-percent performance – that’s what success looks like to me.”

“We want to move beyond vendor to valued partner,” said Lucas, national sales director, industrial channel, at Imperial. “That means establishing deeper, multi-tier customer relationships from a marketing and R&D perspective.”
For Lucas, being a valued partner will require Imperial to position itself as a sweetener solutions company – one that not only provides sugar, but also works closely with its customers to develop innovative sweetener products.

Lucas said that when introducing a new product to customers, Imperial will take extra steps to help them determine how to best use and market the product and ensure its success.

Joe Lucas, national sales director, industrial channel, at Imperial Sugar.

“We will be working hand-in-hand with the Imperial product development team and our customers,” said Lucas. “The team will not only talk to our customers’ R&D people, but also to their marketing groups to discuss at length the features, benefits and applications of our sweeteners at a more technical level.”

Growing the company’s presence throughout North America and maximizing value creation from its joint ventures and alliances – an Imperial core business strategy – will be integral to Lucas’ consultative sales approach. Those joint ventures include Comercializadora Santos Imperial, a sugar producer based in Monterrey, Mexico, and Natural Sweet Ventures, which is developing Stevia-based sweetening products.

Sugar production in Mexico will play a bigger role when Imperial’s domestic production for industrial customers shifts solely to its Port Wentworth, Ga., refinery next year. Also, new stevia-based products will help establish a broader base for Imperial’s sweetening solutions.

Lucas pointed to a meeting with a major food manufacturer at the 2010 International Sweetener Colloquium to show how Imperial can use these ventures to the customer’s advantage.

There, he and Imperial CEO and President John Sheptor shared with the customer how stevia/cane sugar blended sweeteners could be used in its products to leverage the benefits of sugar as well as caloric reduction. They also discussed Imperial’s ability to supply sugar in Mexico, which is very important to this company because it has a large manufacturing operation in Monterrey.

“Prior to that meeting, we’d be looked at only as a supplier who shipped the customer sugar out of our two U.S. plants,” said Lucas. “By the time we were finished, they saw us as a sweetener solutions provider – not only in the U.S., but also in Mexico. In other words, we were no longer perceived as just a cane sugar provider.”

Discussing the challenges and opportunities ahead, Lucas said Imperial is very focused on service in anticipation of its move to a single, U.S. plant operation for industrial customers. This change will occur once Louisiana Sugar Refining – a joint venture in which Imperial is one-third owner – opens its large new plant in Gramercy, La.

Raw sugar at Imperial Sugar's Gramercy refinery.

Imperial plans to place a bulk transfer station in Monterrey as early as the fall to expedite the shipping of sugar across the border and help fill the gap. “We’re fully anticipating that our operations in Mexico and the increased capacity of our Port Wentworth refinery will fill the Southwest market with the industrial volume we have in Gramercy,” said Lucas. “We are not abandoning this market at all.”

According to Lucas, service is already improving and customers are highly impressed with the newly modernized Port Wentworth facility.

Recently, about 20 customers got a first-hand look at the rebuilt plant during an Imperial combustible dust seminar. One customer said: “For six years, I’ve been responsible for combustible dust and safety at our company’s facility. I came in thinking I knew everything and was prepared to be bored for two days. After the first five minutes of a presentation before the actual tour, I knew I was wrong.”

Lucas believes the seminar and tour positioned Imperial as a strong partner for its customers. He said customers walked away with a new appreciation for Imperial’s dedication to safety and operational excellence, as well as for its openness in sharing all it had learned from the explosion that occurred there in early 2008.

“We’re really excited about the opportunity in front of us. It’s all driving toward the idea that we’re not just a sugar company, we’re a sweetener solutions company,” said Lucas. “When customers think of sweeteners, we believe they’ll think of Imperial first.”

Before joining Imperial, Lucas worked for Barry Callebaut, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality cocoa, chocolate and confectionery products.

“My particular role is to branch out of our existing core business to create niche markets, by changing our current product portfolio, modifying the products we make, or making new products,” Svenson explains. The economist in him never loses sight of the bottom-line aspect of his role, which is “to create positive cash flow for the company,” he says.

In doing product development, Svenson’s approach is to eliminate process steps to reach the same end result. “When you have unnecessary steps in a process, you incur extra costs in capital, and that all gets rolled into the price of a product, which impacts customers and, ultimately, the company.”

Doug Svenson is one part scientist and one part economist, the senior process development engineer joined Imperial Sugar Company to work on new products and process development.

Svenson earned his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in wood and paper chemistry from North Carolina State University. He then spent 10 years working in wood and pulp industry research and development. Because wood is comprised of 55 percent to 60 percent polysaccharides, Svenson learned much about sugar chemistry throughout his education and career, even before arriving at Imperial Sugar.

The bulk of his time so far at ISC has gone toward refining the production process for Steviacane,™ a low-calorie, all-natural blend of sugar and stevia. Billed as a new generation of sweetener, Steviacane is deservedly receiving enormous attention from the company’s product development team.

In June, Svenson and the ISC team made a major push forward with a large-scale, multi-day test run of the new granulated sweetener at the company’s Port Wentworth refinery.

“We ran Steviacane for an extended period to look for ways to optimize the process and study the product’s variability,” he says. “What we found is that the product variability was very low, and the product quality was very high. We also identified ways to increase our productivity and efficiency by 80 percent.”

Stepping into a new project, like Steviacane, requires an engineer to tame a swirling mass of information by using every bit of science he knows.

“When you’re coming into something new, it’s almost like managing chaos,” Svenson says. It requires gaining an understanding of a product and the process for making it, as well as the chemistries taking place during its production and the desires of the consumers, who end up with the product.

“You have to ask: What kind of properties do you want to build in to this new product? For example, with a granulated or powdered sweetener, we want to prevent it from absorbing water or getting cakey when it’s sitting in someone’s pantry,” he says.

“The next question is: Can we improve those qualities by changing a process or changing one of the inputs? You have a lot of different things to consider, which means you have to have a broad knowledge of engineering and chemistry, and have a good understanding of what your customer wants.”

The customer, after all, is the one who will see the product on the shelf and want to take it home. Svenson’s thinking always takes him back to these questions: “Is this a good product? Is this something you’d want to buy? Is it priced right?”

He has faith the work he’s doing with Steviacane will be game-changer for the business: “I think we’re going to have a significant impact on the sweetener industry. And I love the process of creating something new. That’s what gets me excited.”

Demand for sugar is on the rise, and the Imperial Sugar Port Wentworth plant is responding to that demand.

Setting goals and surpassing them has become familiar terrain for Imperial Sugar Company’s (ISC) Port Wentworth packaging operators. Recently, packaging operators on several different lines whizzed past yet another goal by sealing up 2.66 million pounds of sugar in one day – a packaging record for the refinery since reopening in November 2009.

“A handful of months ago, we were attempting to package 1.8 million pounds of sugar per day,” recalls William McGhee, packaging team manager. “Once we achieved that, we started reaching for 2 million pounds. Once we got to the 2 million plateau, we aimed for 2.4 million, then later 2.6 million. In that final attempt, we reached and went above our goal.”

Demand for sugar is high, which is why the team has continually upped the number of 2,400-pound totes, 50-pound bags and five-pound bags it hopes to package in a day. This team handles only “small-pack” sugar, not the sugar being distributed by bulk trailer or rail.

William McGee likes breaking one production goal after another.

“We have so much demand for totes, five-pound and 50-pound bags right now, they want us to run those lines at full capacity,” says McGhee.

For the tote operators, the record-setting day was a victory because it was their best sustained run yet – with a grand total of 145 totes packaged. These totes, at 2,400 pounds each, are bound for industrial customers, who create part of the “strong and heavy” demand for ISC sugar, says McGhee.

The operators packaging 50-pound bags – called the “Thiele operators,” after the name of the equipment they operate – achieved a landmark number of bags without technician assistance. “In the past, when we’ve had record days on that equipment, we’ve had technicians from the manufacturing company here on site doing qualifying runs with it,” McGhee says. “So, they were happy to accomplish this on their own.”

On the five-pound bag equipment, he adds, “It was satisfying for those operator mechanics to produce high numbers because they truly ‘own their equipment,’ doing all their own repairs and preventive maintenance. So much of their personal work goes into that equipment.”

The team of packaging operators couldn’t have exceeded their goal on their own, though, notes McGhee. A high-achieving packaging team needs a steady supply of bulk sugar coming in, and a smooth process for moving the packaged product out. It was “very much a joint effort,” he says.

With another goal shattered, McGhee and team now look optimistically toward the next goal: 3 million pounds packaged per day. Says McGhee, “The operators know they can do it. They say, as long as we have sugar, they can run it.”

Forklifts at the Imperial Sugar Port Wentworth warehouse leave trails of light as they load a record number of trucks.

It was a Friday in May, and in Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth warehouse, employees were bustling and trucks were lined up to be loaded with pallets of sugar. On that day, May 28, in a single 16-hour shift, the warehouse loaded and shipped out 71 truckloads of sugar for distribution – a new record for the rebuilt refinery.

To the warehouse team, it felt like old times.

“The volume on that day brought back a lot of memories for us,” says Robert Deloach, the warehouse team leader. “The team felt like we were back to business as usual.”

Before the 2008 explosion at Port Wentworth, it wasn’t unusual for the team to load up to double that amount of sugar during a shift. In those days, Deloach says, Port Wentworth security often came to him saying the line of trucks waiting for sugar was blocking traffic on Highway 25, and that the pickup coordinator needed to ask truck drivers to move off the road.

“We’re not to that point yet,” says Deloach, “but on the day, we hit a new record (in the rebuilt refinery), we felt the same sense of urgency and excitement at the plant.”

Trucks load and roll out of the Port Wentworth warehouse.

The brisk business is an unequivocal sign that demand for ISC’s products is up. More trucks moving in and out of the Port Wentworth warehouse means more orders to fill. The trucks – bound for customers or Imperial Sugar’s satellite warehouses – each carry 42,000 to 43,500 pounds of sugar, depending on whether it is extra-fine granulated, brown or powdered.

“It was a great opportunity for the new employees in the warehouse to see the volume of business we expect going forward,” Deloach says. “We’re looking to average 120 to 135 truckloads a day.”

When volume goes up, keeping the operation running smoothly hinges on strong communications. An appointment coordinator must flawlessly synchronize customer pickups and warehouse clerks must operate scales with efficiency. And on May 28, says Deloach, “it all came together.”

When Kevin Jeffries, Imperial Sugar Company’s corporate safety systems manager, recently spoke about “the science of dust explosions” during Customer Safety Day, he began with a fundamental truth not everyone knows: Under the right conditions, most finely ground organic materials, when dispersed in air, can ignite and lead to an explosion.

“I wanted to bring everyone’s level of awareness up,” Jeffries says. “Since our customers are often handling not just sugar, but flour, cornstarch and other material, my goal was to help them understand the potential hazards and how certain factors relate to their specific operation.”

The potential hazard can be best understood by examining what Jeffries calls the “pentagon of combustible dust.”

Kevin Jeffries, Imperial Sugar Company’s corporate safety systems manager, speaks about “the science of dust explosions” beginning with a fundamental truth not everyone knows: Under the right conditions, most finely ground organic materials, when dispersed in air, can ignite and lead to an explosion.

“A source of ignition, fuel (the dust), oxygen, confinement and dispersion – you’ve got to have all five of these things before you can have a dust explosion,” he says.

While a dust fire occurs when combustible dust is exposed to heat in the presence of air, a dust explosion requires the simultaneous presence of two additional elements – dust suspension and confinement. Suspended dust burns more rapidly and confinement allows for pressure buildup.

Removal of either the suspension or the confinement elements prevents an explosion, although a fire may still occur.

“An explosion happens quickly, think milliseconds … the event often occurs inside equipment – silos, granulators, bucket elevators, enclosed conveyor belts or powder mills,” he added. “Dust accumulations on rafters, beams and building steel can also be a concern.’’

A combustible dust is, technically, “any finely divided solid material that is 420 microns or smaller in diameter,” according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). How dense that dust is will control how combustible it is. Engineers measure the Minimum Explosible Concentration (MEC) inside process equipment – such as conveyors and silos – to see whether the amount of dust dispersed in air is concentrated enough to spread an explosion.

For example, explains Jeffries, with an MEC concentration of coal dust in the air, a 25-watt light bulb six feet away from you would not be visible.

To gauge the likelihood of explosion and the potential intensity of an explosion, engineers also can measure Minimum Ignition Energy (how much energy is required to ignite a dust cloud), Minimum Ignition Temperature (the temperature that will ignite a dust cloud), Kst (the maximum rate of pressure rise) and Pmax (the maximum explosion pressure).

Engineers use some of these calculations, such as Kst and Pmax, to design venting or isolation systems that prevent explosions.

“No one wants an explosion to happen,” he says. “But the best guidelines and standards tell us to design pressure-release or isolation systems, and to design walls that absorb and deflect energy generated by a blast.”

Jeffries emphasizes that no one wants an explosion.

As guests on Customer Safety Day – almost all of whom had engineering or other technical backgrounds – toured the refinery with Jeffries, many had questions about dust-collection systems and other state-of-the-art techniques now in place at the Port Wentworth refinery. Even among engineers, Jeffries says, many people “just don’t fully understand the qualities of combustible dust.”

The consensus standards published by the NFPA aren’t easily found and aren’t widely known within the industry, though they have been around for decades. Adding to the knowledge gap is the fact that different states have different fire codes, and inspectors may have different levels of experience. That’s one reason OSHA recently re-started its National Emphasis Program on combustible dust to allow for more education, outreach and inspection.

Jeffries says helping Imperial Sugar’s customers be more aware of prevention tactics was a primary goal of his “science of dust explosions” presentation. The company’s management and engineering team has gained extensive knowledge from the process-safety experts at Chilworth Technology Group, which was brought in as consultants for the rebuilding of the Port Wentworth refinery.

“If we can give that information to a customer in an eight-hour segment, so he can make a determination for his own facility, then we’ve done our job. We don’t want to be one of those companies that hordes information. We want to share what we know with others.”

Smith, who holds a bachelor’s degree in bakery science from Kansas State University, was recruited by Imperial Sugar from Kerry Ingredients. At Kerry, she helped develop sweet ingredients for the frozen dessert market, including such firms as Ben & Jerry’s. Before that, Smith worked at American Ingredients and International Multifoods, for a total of eight years in the food manufacturing industry.

Imperial Sugar Company recently added a new member to its R&D team: Food Scientist Emily Smith.

“I joined Imperial’s R&D team to help develop value-added specialty products in line with the company’s new direction,” says Smith. “Our goal is to expand the product portfolio and serve the customer in new and better ways.”

With a robust commodities business already in place, Imperial Sugar continues to develop new products that deliver more value to customers and bring higher margins to the company. Steviacane™ is one such product.

Steviacane is a 100-percent natural sweetener that delivers a reduction in calories from sugar based on the Steviacane product used. It is produced through a patented process in which cane sugar and stevia, a sweetener derived from the leaves of the Stevia plant, are combined into an easy-to-use granulated product.

To help perfect its taste and performance profile, Smith is doing some application work with Steviacane and testing it with food items consumers typically prepare with sugar. Recently, in an informal test, she baked several batches of sugar cookies: one with sugar and one with the new Steviacane sweetener. These were then handed out to friends and co-workers to get their reactions.

The responses to the cookies using Steviacane have been positive – with no bitter after taste reported, as is usually the case with stevia sweeteners now on the market. A series of formal sensory panels will follow.

Smith sees many opportunities for Imperial Sugar to grow in the sweetener solutions market. “New sugar-based sweeteners have the potential to be used in just about anything, including cakes, cookies, soda, coffee – whatever people might want to put them in. We want to help people economize on time and money, eat healthy and still enjoy a great-tasting product from a brand they know and love.”

William McGee, packaging team manager at the Port Wentworth plant, inspects work on the updating of the brown sugar packaging line to improve production yields.

Packaging Team Manager William McGhee receives a “statement of yield” every month, which tells him how much sugar the Port Wentworth refinery has produced and how much it should have produced – based on the raw sugar the refinery started with.

“You want the yield to be high,” says McGhee. The refinery always loses a very small amount during the production process, but McGhee’s aim is to package and make available for selling 99 percent of the original volume of raw sugar.

He suspected that two of the bagging machines – called FAWEMA #9 and FAWEMA #10, named after the manufacturer – were “giving away” sugar with each package and decreasing the yield. So, he had a DMAIC team do an analysis, starting with the FAWEMA #9 machine that typically packages 10-pound bags of extra-fine granulated sugar.

DMAIC – which stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control – is a Six Sigma approach used to determine root causes of problems in manufacturing or other processes. In this instance, the team randomly pulled 100 bags off the line, weighed them and did some number-crunching.

What the team learned is that the average “giveaway” – or the average amount of extra sugar going into bags – was 45.2 grams per bag. That’s a giveaway of approximately 1 percent. “We saw an opportunity for improvement there,” says McGhee.

Overfilling packages decreases total plant yield.

“If I produce five million pounds of sugar, I want 100 percent of that sugar to be sold at the maximum selling price. Overfilling bags means giving away product, which decreases our yield. ”

The DMAIC approach is particularly useful in a case like this because the analysis helps a business see what could be affecting yield. In measuring and taking stock of the process, says McGhee, “you’re trying to find out if you’re running your process in control, whether you’re staying close to what that target weight is.”

The team quickly did a DMAIC analysis to determine where on the FAWEMA #9 machine the company was losing time or incurring waste. Team members included Willie Jenkins, Willie Johnson, both FAWEMA operators; electrician Michael Anderson; mechanic Rodney Crutfield; and supervisor Tyrone Pinckney.

“Typically, what’s most hurtful to your process is lost time,” says McGhee. “Because if you’re not producing, you’re not making money.”

One of the big learnings can be seen in a Pareto chart that shows how much downtime FAWEMA #9 experienced. “We found that the biggest cause of downtime was operator breaks. So, we found a way to have someone else relieve those workers, and we immediately gained over an hour every day that we were losing to breaks,” McGhee points out.

The team also learned the equipment wasn’t running at the design rate. Every piece of equipment comes with an optimal running speed, which is based on the capability of all the parts. When FAWEMA installed the equipment, the company provided a design rate for it.

What happens over time, though, is that often when operators have minor problems on the line, they slow down the rate slightly – giving the equipment longer to a complete a cycle. Those minor adjustments add up, however.

By increasing the rate to bring it closer to its design rate, FAWEMA #9 went from packaging 10-pound bags of extra-fine granulated sugar at a rate of 40 bags per minute to 50 bags per minute.

“We gave ourselves the opportunity to produce 600 more bags every hour of the 10-pound bags,” McGhee says. “We built more capability into our hourly production rate just by increasing the speed.”

And while DMAIC teams typically do a fresh analysis with each piece of equipment or process, some of the learnings from the FAWEMA analysis – such as the new approach to operators taking breaks – will translate to the FAWEMA #10 machine, as well as to the packaging process for different sized packages.

Randy Bragg, specialties division manager. at the blackstrap molasses refining area.

Nearly a century ago, workers at the Port Wentworth sugar refinery couldn’t have envisioned that the dark syrup left over at the end of the refining process – and routinely thrown away as waste – would one day become a value-added product bought by industrial customers such as General Mills and Kellogg’s.

The product, called blackstrap molasses, is captured at the tail end of a refining process that begins with melting and boiling raw sugar to create a pure, clear syrup, which later becomes crystallized white sugar. As the raw sugar is repeatedly boiled and clear syrup captured, the remaining syrup becomes increasingly darker, making it unsuitable as a source for white sugar.

That high-color syrup now is sent by production tank to Randy Bragg and team in Imperial Sugar’s specialties division, which handles the liquid side of the refinery’s business.

Arthur Edwards checks colors of the blackstrap molasses blends in the lab.

“Blackstrap went from being waste to being used for animal feed, and now we make a value-added product out of it and provide it to customers who are looking for a sweetener with precise color and flavor profiles,” says Bragg, specialties division manager.

After the team analyzes, pasteurizes and filters the blackstrap syrup, it’s used as an ingredient in many of the 36 syrup blends designed for large industrial customers, who add the syrup sweeteners to products such as cereals, barbecue sauces, cookies and baked beans.

Straight blackstrap in a spoon might not be pleasing to the taste. Its flavor is strong and not particularly sweet. But when blended with other ingredients, such as golden cane syrup and refiners’ syrup, the flavor takes on a different profile.

“The reason for all the blends is that customers have particular flavors, colors or physical characteristics that they’re looking for,” explains Bragg. “Over the years, they’ve told us what they’re looking for, and we’ve matched their needs.”

In 2007, the edible syrup station at Port Wentworth produced 5.1 million gallons of syrup blends. And 70% of all the syrup blends have blackstrap molasses in them.

“Each customer order is made specifically for that customer,” says Bragg. Finished syrups are packaged and distributed in 55-gallon drums, 275-gallon totes, bulk truck and bulk rail. “We don’t produce anything ahead of time. When we give someone a certificate of analysis, it’s for that single order.”

The certificate of analysis is issued by the edible syrup station’s laboratory, which tests and analyzes samples of each blend as it comes out of production – measuring sucrose, color, pH, ash content and “brix,” or the percentage of solids in the solution.

Each customer order is made specifically for that customer. Finished syrups are packaged and distributed in 55-gallon drums, 275-gallon totes, bulk truck and bulk rail. Steve Smith delivers shipping papers for a bulk delivery to a driver.

“Our station isn’t like the rest of the refinery, where you might be running the same product over and over,” he says. “We may make 10 different products in the same day, so we do all the necessary analysis on the spot.”

Keeping an eye on precise standards and strict control over the production process are what Bragg says keeps the product quality high. “One thing we don’t do is, we don’t use anyone else’s blackstrap. We could buy it on the market to use in syrup blends, but in order to keep tight control, we only use the blackstrap produced in Savannah. That way, we can be hands on, and we know where it’s coming from.”

“The minute you step into the shoes of selling sugar, everyone wants to meet with you,” says Wilkes, the Southeast development manager for Imperial Sugar Company (ISC). “Not everyone wants to chat about a muffin. But everybody wants to talk sugar! Especially in the South, where we love our sweet tea.”

Her job is to sell sugar to a network of foodservice brokers, who sell to 105 foodservice distributors and redistributors who, in turn, sell to the foodservice industry in the Southeast. In addition, Wilkes takes care of 20 high-profile national accounts, such as Denny’s and Chick-fil-A.

The best part of selling Imperial Sugar’s products, though, isn’t the swiftly opening doors, she says. It’s the enthusiasm among customers over the company’s strong return to the marketplace now that its Port Wentworth refinery has ramped up production.

Jennifer Wilkes job will be to is to sell sugar to a network of foodservice brokers.

“The exciting part for me is reactivating accounts with old customers in the Southeast, and being able to say: ‘Hey, we’re up and running, and we have sugar ready to sell you!’ Many of them, quite honestly, have been wanting to buy our product as soon as we were ready for production again. They missed us.”

Today, Wilkes is able to meet customers’ demands with the Port Wentworth refinery providing a steady supply of white, brown and powdered sugars.

She’s helped by the fact that Imperial Sugar’s Dixie Crystals are one of the top-selling branded sugars in the Southeast. The company has the added distinction of being well-known and respected in the region. “Our customers are happy to start purchasing sugar again that lots of consumers in the Southeast want to buy.”

Because she has past experience working for brokers and distributors, Wilkes is able to put herself in customers’ shoes and bring more value to their relationships. “I understand what the broker needs from me, what the distributor needs from the broker, and how to manage all that so we can all be successful.”

Beyond providing customers with quality products and good deals, Wilkes also brings something else to the table – ISC’s insight into the global sugar marketplace.

“They want to know what the sugar markets are doing, or what’s happening with the pricing of raw sugar cane,” she says. “The sales team takes its cues from Patrick Henneberry,” who is Imperial Sugar’s senior vice president and chief of commodities management. “We’ll say: ‘Based on our insight, we speculate that this is what might happen next.’ I just did that with customers five times this morning!”

Wilkes sees her role as being a valuable, credible source of information for customers. “I talk to them by phone, visit them in person and for many of them, I send out weekly sugar market charts and monthly commodity updates. Because sugar is such a high-volume purchase, I can help turn somebody into a really good, educated buyer of sugar – if they want to learn. I can help make them successful.”

Gramercy labor extension signing included: (seated l-r) are George Muller, ISC VP, and Lloyd Kliebert, union president, (standing l-r) are Keith Griffin, HR manager, with union members Kerwin Joseph, Roland Brown, Troy Armont, Janelle Poche and Karen Howard. Raylene Carter, refinery plant manager (far right).

By an overwhelming majority, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local No. 1167-P recently approved a one-year extension of its contract with the Imperial Sugar Company (ISC).

George Muller, ISC vice president of administration, says the original collective bargaining contract would have ended February 1, 2011. With the extension, the contract now will run to February 1, 2012.

Construction is under way on a new state-of-the-art, 3,100-tons-per-day Louisiana Sugar Refining (LSR) refinery at Gramercy – a joint venture with Louisiana growers and millers, Cargill and the Imperial Sugar Company.

The contract extension applies to the ISC packaging facility that will be operated adjacent to the LSR refinery.

Port Wentworth Safety Director Billy Morgan schools new trainees on the proper procedures to operate safely within the plant.

Bruce Waguespack, Imperial Sugar Company’s manager of learning and performance improvement, is quick to tell you the company is developing a workforce that’s like a multi-talented baseball team of utility players.

“We want to make sure the player can play catcher and shortstop and first base,” he says. “That sort of versatility makes him a more valuable contributor, so he can fill in if someone takes vacation or gets sick. Our goal is to have a multi-skilled workforce.”

With that goal in mind, Waguespack, department managers and front-line supervisors are creating on–the-job training that enables such a resourceful workforce to flourish. Under a new qualification and certification process, employees will cross-train on different jobs to be equally productive at stations throughout ISC’s refinery.

Bruce Waguespack, Imperial Sugar Company’s manager of learning and performance improvement.

For example, an employee who today is qualified to work at the affination station soon will be trained to also handle jobs on the press floor and in the char house.

The well-structured qualification process pairs trainers and trainees in a series of rigorous routines that systematically expand workers’ skills and knowledge. For starters, a trainee must become well-versed in all the documentation around the process he or she is learning – such as job-safety analysis. To ensure consistency, Waguespack now is creating streamlined, easy-to-use instructions for every station.
“Our new documentation will have pictures of each step and equipment, flow charts, process diagrams, video clips and other user-friendly features to walk a trainee through safe, standard operating procedures,” he says. “Part of the job-qualification process will be a trainee doing self-paced study of those documents and media, with review and clarification by a peer trainer.”

Employees can expect to get by-the-numbers training at stations throughout Imperial Sugar’s operations. For every station, there may be 30 to 50 tasks to learn, with each task requiring a list of standard steps to follow. “Nobody can teach those tasks to others better than the people already doing the job according to best practice,” Waguespack says.

A peer trainer will take a trainee through the 12 steps required to perform each task until the trainee is proficient – even “with no one watching,” according to the training material.

“What’s important in this process is that the trainee understands why the task is done, not just how,” explains Waguespack. “And the trainer will need to think through how to communicate that well because the trainee will need to explain it back to the trainer ultimately.”

Looking at the step-by-step guide to the training, it’s easy to see that principle in action.
Waguespack says Imperial Sugar wants to make certain there’s two-way communications. “A lot of time, people will train others and think they’re being understood. But that doesn’t always work. In this training, trainers will need to make sure the trainee can paraphrase back to them. That’s one reason we’ll kick this process off by ‘training the trainers.’”

New trainees Edwin Rodriquez (center) and Chris Porter (back) are schooled in numerous safety, environmental and best practice proceedures.

After training and practicing “what-if” scenarios, an employee will take a written exam for a particular station. An employee has to know the safety, quality and productivity criteria – and demonstrate proficiency with all of the tasks. Only then is an employee qualified for the station.

All along, it is the trainee who drives the process, determining when he or she is ready to move to each next step.

“Every time I’ve set up a training process like this in the past, the new process has shortened the time it takes to get someone trained because it’s more structured,” Waguespack says. “Rather than telling someone, ‘Oh, just go follow Joe around, and hope that he shows you something useful,’ you can give them a step-by-step process that ensures they know exactly what they need to know – and that they can do what they need to do.

“A lot of organizations do it that first way. And we’re going to challenge that process, so our associates are prepared to bring their best game to ISC.”

(l-r front) Quynh-Luu Ha, of Imperial Sugar's marketing team, and Brand manager Hyuna Lee, (l-r back) The News Group Net's writer Gordon Curry, founding partner Ed Lallo and Imperial newsroom editor Springfield Lewis, celebrate two Bronze Quill awards from IABC Houston for strategic online communication.

Imperial Sugar Company (ISC) took home top honors for its news-oriented website at the recent 2010 International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Houston Bronze Quill Awards dinner. The Houston chapter recognizes the outstanding efforts of the area’s best communicators each year.

Developed with Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor and run by The News Group Net, the ISC Newsroom won an “Award of Excellence” for strategic communication processes and an “Award of Merit” for electronic and digital communication.

“The partnership between Imperial Sugar and The News Group Net has produced a one-stop source of news about the company and the sugar industry,” said Imperial Brand Manager Hyuna Lee. “The ISC Newsroom offers a broad perspective on industry developments, as well as credible news about the company’s business to internal and external stakeholders.”

According to David Henderson, a principal and co-founder of The News Group Net, the ISC Newsroom was developed originally to ensure Imperial Sugar’s brand reputation and point of view were well-represented as the company restored its business and reputation after an explosion struck one of its sugar refineries in early 2008. He said it has evolved into a one-of-a-kind online news site that blends Imperial Sugar’s market leadership with up-to-date industry news, creating a unique category of “brand journalism.”

The awards program was emceed by Sharron Melton, morning anchor for KTRK-TV/ABC 13 in Houston.

Ed Lallo, co-founder of The News Group Net, joined Lee and Quynh-Luu Ha of Imperial Sugar’s marketing team in receiving the Bronze Quill Awards. Lallo credited senior management’s ongoing commitment to the website, combined with the spirit of the company’s employees, for the newsroom’s success.