The company was founded in Jasper, Alabama in 1935 by Heman Edward Drummond, an Alabama coal miner. Drummond started mining on land he inherited from his family; he used mules to drag coal out of the mines. When Drummond died in 1956, the company remained family-owned. In 1970, the company signed a contract to sell coal to Japanese steel companies. In 1973, Garry N. Drummond, one of the founder's seven children, was appointed as Chairman. Another son, Elbert Allen "Larry" Drummond served as Vice Chairman until his death in 2012. During 1979-1980, these Drummond brothers, along with company executive Clyde Black, were indicted for bribing three Alabama legislators, by means of supplying them with prostitutes. The three-month trial was dismissed by Judge Frank McFadden. In 2003, the company was sued by Colombian widows and orphans of three labor union leaders who were murdered by paramilitaries near Drummond mines. The lawsuit accused Drummond of "supporting paramilitary fighters at its facilities, thereby making Drummond liable for the deaths." It was known as Estate of Rodriquez v. Drummond Co.. By 2009, the United States Department of Justice had not found sufficient evidence and ruled in favor of the company, concluding that it had never supported any action of illegal groups. In February 2013, journalist Alejandro Arias reported with photographic evidence dumping of hundreds of tons of coal into the Caribbean Sea by the company a month earlier. Based on this evidence the Colombian Government temporarily suspended some operations of the company in Santa Marta where the incident occurred. Drummond was also fined US$3.6 million. As of December 2013, the company employed a workforce of 6,600, with annual sales of US$3 billion. It was inducted into the Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame. In 2015, the Drummond Company sued attorneys Terrence P. Collingsworth and William R. Scherer, the advocacy group International Rights Advocates, and Dutch businessman Albert van Bilderbeek, one of the owners of Llanos Oil, accusing them of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by alleging that Drummond had worked alongside Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia to murder labor union leaders within proximity of their Colombian coal mines, which Drummond denies. In October 2018, David Roberson, previously the company's vice-president of government affairs, was sentenced to "two-and-a-half years in prison, followed by one year of supervised release", and fined $25,000 for his July 2018 convictions, alongside those of attorney Joel Iverson Gilbert, on "six criminal charges each relating to a scheme intended to stop expansion of a toxic cleanup site in Jefferson County by the Environmental Protection Agency", through a bribe to former basketball player, then state legislatorOliver Robinson, through use of his nonprofit organization, The Oliver Robinson Foundation. Roberson maintained that he "trusted Joel" and "never thought we were bribing Oliver Robinson."
Assets and operations
Coal mines
Drummond operates the Pribbenow and El Descanso mines near La Loma in the Cesar Department in northern Colombia. Both mines produce bituminous coal. Production from Pribbenow, comprising almost 50% of all coal mined in Colombia, is exported to 11 countries. The company is "Colombia’s second-biggest thermal coal producer."
Perry Supply
The company owns Perry Supply, a subsidiary founded in 1913, which sells "mining, foundry, construction, and industrial supplies."
Foundry coke
The company also owns Alabama By-Products Corporation, also known as ABC Coke, located in Tarrant, Alabama. According to Forbes, it is "the largest single producer of foundry coke in the U.S.." Starting 2015, Drummond funneled money though its law firm Balch & Bingham to a retired state legislator Oliver Robinson. In exchange for over a hundred thousand dollars, Robinson encouraged poor people in the area not to cooperate with the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to list areas of north Birmingham as a superfund site due to pollution caused by ABC. In 2017 Robinson plead guilty to various corruption charges.
