California-headquartered Inszone Insurance Services has continued its hot streak of acquisitions with the purchase of Coastal Insurance Services in Florida and affiliated Optimal Insurance Solutions.
The acquisition marks Inszone’s first step into the Florida market, the company said in a news
release. Coastal Insurance was founded in 2008 by Rolando Gonzalez. He later established Optimal Insurance in Illinois, and the two agencies were combined in 2024.
The agencies’ teams are likely to remain in place under the Inszone ownership, the companies said.
Inszone, founded in 2002, led the country with 17 merger and acquisition deals in th
e first quarter of this year, according to OPTIS Partners. Read more here. Last week, Inszone announced it also had acquired Smith & Co. Insurance in Arkansas, and James Vozar agency in Michigan.
Inszone offers commercial and personal insurance coverage, as well as benefits.
Also in Florida, Shepherd Insurance announced it is moving its office from Sarasota to Pendery Place in the Bradenton/Lakewood Ranch area.
The Sarasota office saw the coming together of five agencies over the past 13 years through acquisitions, making the Bradenton move a natural next step in t
he firm’s long-term growth plan for the Florida market, Shepherd leadership said.
Shepherd, one of the larger U.S. agency groups, has its headquarters in Indiana and now has seven Florida agency offices.
A Kentucky food-coloring manufacturer made a number of missteps and was not equipped t
o prevent the 2024 runaway chemical reaction that killed two workers and caused millions of dollars in damage to the plant and surrounding neighborhoods.
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That was the conclusion from the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which this week released its final report on the Givaudan Sense Colour
explosion in Louisville.
“This tragic incident was a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Chemical Safety Board (CSB) Chairman Steve Owens said in a statement. “The reactor’s pressure relief syst
m was not designed to release pressure from a reaction like this, and Givaudan did not recognize the potential for a runaway reaction to happen.”
The CSB, an independent, nonregulatory federal agency that investigates incidents, explained that a reactor, used to produce caramel coloring for food pr
oducts, had been relocated to the site from an older facility. In 2021, the reactor was modified and installed in the Louisville plant.
But the retrofit was not as safe as it could have been, the board said.
The two workers killed in the November 2024 blast were in a control room that was just 40 feet from the reactor—a control room that was not built to be blast-resistan
t. The 2,000-pound reactor shell flew almost the length of a football field and landed against a home. O
ther debris was shot into the surrounding neighborhood.
“The … company did not understand the severe reactive hazards associated with the sugar ingredients used in its caramel coloring process,” the report noted
. “As a result, critical safeguards, including the emergency relief system, were incapable of preventing this catastrophic reactor rupture.”
