General Mills flour mill in Kansas City
CHICAGO — Sugar producers have become the latest target of alleged price fixing claims, as more of the largest food and candy companies have banded together to sue the makers and distributors of refined granulated sugar.
Plaintiffs, including General Mills, Kellanova, Mars and McKee Foods Corp., filed suit in Chicago federal court on Sept. 4, accusing sugar refiners and producers of allegedly illegally conspiring to artificially boost the price of the sugar that pours into the plaintiff companies' products.
Minnesota-based General Mills makes many of America's most popular breakfast cereals, boxed baked goods kits, and a variety of other snacks and other food products, sold under an array of brand names, including Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Old El Paso, Progresso, Totino's and Nature Valley, among others.
Chicago-based Kellanova is a spinoff company, formerly associated with Kellogg's, producing a wide variety of snack foods, including Pop-Tarts, Pringles, Eggo waffles, Rice Krispies Treats, Cheez-Its and other snack crackers, and international versions of Kellogg's popular breakfast cereal brands.
Virginia-based Mars produces many of America's most popular candies and chocolate bars, as well as other snack foods.
And Tennessee-based McKee produces Little Debbie snack cakes, as well as varieties of granola bars, fruit snacks and breakfast cereals, among other packaged food items.
In the lawsuit, the packaged food makers accuse the sugar producers of allegedly overcharging them for the sugar they must purchase to produce their branded products. And by extension, they assert this has forced them to, in turn, raise prices charged to consumers to compensate.
Defendants listed in the lawsuit include American Sugar Refining (ASR), Domino Foods, United Sugars Corp., and American Crystal Sugar Co., among others.
The complaint asserts the defendant companies are the "dominant sugar producers" in the U.S. and the world.
The lawsuit asserts the defendant companies engaged in "years-long coordinated scheme ... to fix, raise, maintain, and/or stabilize the prices" of granulated sugar, the common product sold in bags and boxes to consumers at supermarkets and sold wholesale to food product makers.
The lawsuit asserts the sugar refiners' alleged conduct allegedly violated federal antitrust law.
While the lawsuit in Chicago federal court is new, the claims laid out in the lawsuit are not. The Chicago lawsuit follows less than two months after a collection of other big food product manufacturers, including PepsiCo, Frito-Lay, Mondelez Global and Bimbo Bakeries, lodged a similar lawsuit over price-fixing claims in Minnesota federal court.
And since 2024, more than two dozen other antitrust lawsuits have been targeted at sugar producers, accusing them of illegally conspiring to set and control prices.
The Chicago lawsuit asserts those lawsuits have driven down the price of sugar since 2024.
However, in response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for ASR asserted the claims in the lawsuit were "baseless" and have simply repackaged the same claims contained in the lawsuits dating back to 2024.
In a statement published in a report first published by Bloomberg, the ASR spokesperson said:
“It’s simply additional plaintiffs’ lawyers peeling away parties who were already represented in the pending litigation. As with the earlier case, the facts don’t support their allegations, and we will demonstrate that as we defend this case."
The lawsuits vs the sugar producers, however, also follow a similar path to a host of other class action and consolidated legal actions against other commodity producers, including sprawling legal actions targeting meat producers and others.
Lawsuits against chicken and poultry producers, for instance, have resulted in settlements collectively worth more than $1 billion. Plaintiffs’ lawyers have collected about a quarter to a third of that amount in fees.
Plaintiffs in the Chicago action are represented by attorneys from the firm of Jenner & Block, of Chicago.
