It’s official—sugar is out. Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. will phase out sugar production on Maui at Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company, the last sugar plantation in Hawai‘i, by the end of 2016. The company plans to replace sugarcane with energy crops, food crops and industrial hemp, which some say could bolster Hawai‘i’s ag industry.
We have made every effort to avoid having to take this action.
However, the roughly $30 million agribusiness operating loss we expect to incur in 2015 and the forecast for continued significant losses clearly are not sustainable, and we must now move forward with a new concept for our lands that allows us to keep them in productive agricultural use.
—Stanley Kuriyama, Alexander & Baldwin executive chairman
