Ozama Sugar Company, Limited

Identity area

Type of entity

Corporate body

Authorized form of name

Ozama Sugar Company, Limited

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Description area

Dates of existence

1935-1955 or later

History

The Ozama Sugar Company, Limited, was a sugar planatation and mill operating in the Dominican Republic. The Ozama Sugar Company was a whollly-owned subsidiary of the British Columbia Sugar Refining Co. Ltd. from 1944 to 1955.

The Ozama Sugar Company, Limited was formed by the Bank of Montreal in or before 1935, in order to operate the plantation and factory that the Bank acquired by public auction. The operations, founded near the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo around 1908 by Don Santiago Michelena, originally operated under the company name Ingenio San Luis, C. pora A. After Michelena's death in 1928 and after the bankruptcy of his company, the mill was idle for a number of years before his sons sold the plantation and mill to Ozama in 1935.

The Bank of Montreal, through the Ozama Sugar Company, operated the plantation and mill as an ongoing business, but due to Dominican law limiting the operations of banks in non-banking businesses, was not able to invest sufficient funds to make Ozama fully viable.

Through their international sugar brokers, Messrs. Czarnikow Limited, BC Sugar President P.T. Rogers learned that the company was available for purchase. Rogers had been interested in acquiring sugar operations in the Caribbean for a number of years, as a hedge against anticipated sugar shortages and increased prices once rationing ended after World War II.

After a reconnaisance trip to the Dominican Republic in 1944, an agreement was made with the Bank of Montreal, and the British Columbia Sugar Company, Limited acquired the Ozama Sugar Refining Company, Limited. BC Sugar took over operations in June 1944.

During the time that BC Sugar owned Ozama, the company was subject to increasing and increasingly erratic taxation policies and interference by the Trujillo government, making significant impacts on the profitability and operational viability of Ozama. In 1955, BC Sugar sold the Ozama Sugar Company to Azucarera Nacional, a company controlled by Trujillo, for approximately half its book value.

The operations of Ozama after the sale to Azucarera Nacional are not known; it is not known if it continued to operate as an independent company or was merged into Azucarera Nacional.

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Related entity

The British Columbia Sugar Refining Company, Limited (1890-2008)

Identifier of related entity

Category of relationship

hierarchical

Dates of relationship

1944-1955

Description of relationship

Ozama Sugar Plantation and Factory was a subsidiary of The British Columbia Sugar Refining Company, Limited.

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Dates of creation, revision and deletion

Revised 2014-01-02, SW

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