General Mills, Mars, Kellanova and McKee Foods are suing major US sugar producers and refiners, along with the market-information company Commodity Information Inc, alleging a multi-year price-fixing scheme.
The lawsuit claims that sugar producers fixed, raised and maintained the prices of granulated sugar from January 2017 to at least October 2024 by sharing pricing information in violation of antitrust laws under the Sherman Act.
In October 2025, US District Judge Jerry Blackwell allowed claims against ASR Group and United Sugar to proceed in a similar case, while dismissing claims against several other defendants, including Michigan Sugar and Louis Dreyfus, for insufficient allegations tying them to the purported conspiracy.
The new lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, includes a long list of defendants, including: ASR Group International, Inc., American Sugar Refining, Inc., Domino Foods, Inc., United Sugar Producers & Refiners Cooperative (formerly known as United Sugars Corporation), American Crystal Sugar Company, Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative, United States Sugar Corporation, Commodity Information, Inc., and Richard Wistisen, the principal of Commodity Information Inc., a small Orem, Utah–based sugar-industry information business.
McKee Foods declined to comment on the case, and ASR Group responded, denied the allegations in the lawsuit. All other parties involved did not respond to requests for comment.
“This latest filing repackages the same baseless allegations that have been pending for approximately two years,” Marianne Martinez, spokesperson for ASR Group, said in an email. “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.”
Accusations against Big Sugar
The lawsuit claims that the producers’ alleged price-fixing conspiracy entailed the commodity defendants providing producers with access to a clearinghouse of real-time information on competitor data.
The alleged exchange of information included non-anonymized, non-public data about the companies, such “profits, prices, costs, production levels and sold positions, all of which are key metrics and highly competitively sensitive information in this market that competitors would not share with each other in the absence of an agreement,” the lawsuit claims.
Producers allegedly agreed to use that clearinghouse data to establish and maintain fixed prices for granulated sugar, according to the lawsuit.
A compromised industry?
Plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit that the sugar industry is prone to illegal collusion in violation of antitrust laws, noting that the companies involved have “numerous opportunities to collude, including through trade association meetings.”
Calling the industry “structurally susceptible” to price-fixing, the plaintiffs also argue that the industry “has been marked by repeated violations of the antitrust laws for more than 80 years, including conduct remarkably similar to that alleged here.”
Prices up during alleged conspiracy
The price of sugar “experienced one of its steepest climbs on record,” reaching all-time highs during the alleged conspiracy, the lawsuit claims.
But the first lawsuit filed in 2024 had a chilling effect on the purported antitrust activity, according to the lawsuit.
“Granulated sugar prices dropped significantly after plaintiffs began filing antitrust lawsuits against defendants and others beginning in March 2024,” the lawsuit stated.
