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HC&S

    Sugar always has been a part of Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. After 30 years as a partnership, Alexander & Baldwin incorporated in 1900. The new corporation served, initially, as an "agency". Agencies played a vital role in Hawaii's sugar business in those days, arranging supplies for the plantations, arranging shipping for sugar and molasses, and arranging financing for a variety of the plantations' needs.

    From the beginning, the A&B agency invested heavily in its client companies — most of which were sugar plantations — and had a voice in their affairs. A&B helped make the plantation operations successful, and the sugar companies’ dividends were a source of its income.

    There was another dimension - akin to close family feeling - which prevailed between A&B and its sugar plantations. As an agent, and more so later as owner of several sugar companies, A&B had its pets and problems within a plantation group of diverse ages, temperaments and degrees of success.

    On Maui were the elder ones - Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company, mostly a shining star; and Maui Agricultural Company, Limited (MA Company), A&B's own successful creation.

    While both were autonomous plantations for many years, each was enhanced by the support and numerous agency services provided by A&B.

    Like parenthood, being an agent brought rewards and frustrations to A&B. The plantations were challenged constantly to produce more and better sugar. They had to bring in water and electricity, buy equipment and introduce technology. Early plantations also had major responsibility for their growing numbers of employees.

    At one time or another, A&B's sugar business also was affected by such troubles as an earthquake, tidal waves, floods, bubonic plague, fire, hurricanes and drought.

    But, A&B and its sugar family weathered these trials as they did two world wars when employees went to the aid of their country and many plantation services were added to the effort.

    A&B's sugar history, born of the green thumbs, farsightedness and perseverance of its founders, flourished through the dedicated labor of thousands of plantation employees.

    In the early days, most of these employees were immigrants to Hawaii — Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Scottish, Scandinavian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Puerto Rican, Afro-American, Korean, Filipino. They enhanced the native Hawaiian workforce.

    The sweat and tears of these diverse pioneers - who toiled in the harsh "hapai ko!" days of long hours and manual labor - are buried but not forgotten under fields of waving cane.

    In modern times, A&B's sugar history has been made by new generations of workers, whose skills and enthusiasm have blended with technology to keep the plantations competitive.

    By 1921, A&B was agent for two successful plantations which also had become powerful economic and social forces on the island of Maui.

    There was HC&S with cane lands in Central Maui and a factory at Puunene; and Maui Agricultural Co. (MA Co.), growing cane in the east and uplands and with a factory in Paia.

    Sugar history was made in 1948, when these two plantations merged, creating one of the largest sugar producers in the United States.

    Playing an important role in HC&S history was Frank F. Baldwin, who led the plantation with distinction and devotion over five decades.

    Frank Baldwin also served as president of Alexander and Baldwin, Limited from 1947 to 1960, and had been an A&B director since 1918.

    He became manager of HC&S in 1906, succeeding his father, Henry P. Baldwin. When his father died in 1911, Frank became both president and manager of HC&S. When he retired as manager on his 70^th birthday in 1948, HC&S already was one of the largest cane sugar producers in the world. His son, Asa Baldwin, succeeded him as manager, but Frank Baldwin retained the HC&S presidency until his death on February 6, 1960.

    Henry P. Baldwin named the HC&S Puunene factory, completed in 1901, for a cinder cone which once had been home to Hawaiian geese — Puunene, Hawaiian for "goose hill".

    The Puunene factory began grinding in 1902. For 50 years it was one of the largest sugar factories in the world.

    The new Maui Agricultural Company Paia factory (second to bear that name) went into service in 1906, replacing the old Hamakuapoko factory built in 1879 for the predecessor plantations.

    Maui Agricultural Co. had a distinguished early history. In 1907, the plantation build a lime kiln which until mid-1989, manufactured and supplied dry hydrated lime to sugar factories and others on Maui. In 1917, Maui Agricultural Co. built the first distillery in the United States for producing alcohol from molasses. For several years during World War I, the plantation’s vehicles and equipment operated on molasses alcohol instead of kerosene and gasoline.

    During that war, Maui Agricultural Co. also grew corn and ground it at its Haiku factory, supplying the entire Territory of Hawaii. MA Co. during this period converted its lime kiln to cement production, continuing this activity until the shortage of cement eased.

    Meanwhile, HC&S had not been idle. Between 1907 and 1926, it built a new Waihee ditch (with Wailuku Sugar) from the West Maui mountains, merged with Kihei Plantation, began construction of the Wailoa ditch from East Maui, completed a central power plant and made such impressive purchases as the first "modern-type" Northwest cane loader.

    There was early cooperation between HC&S and Maui Agricultural Co. In 1908, the two jointly organized East Maui Irrigation Company, Limited to manage their ditch system and divide water between the two plantations.

    In 1926, HC&S — up to then a California corporation — was incorporated in Hawaii. The following year, it completed construction of Well 7, one of the largest deep wells in the world, with a capacity of 40 million gallons of brackish water per day.

    Throughout its history, before and after construction of Well 7, HC&S built or acquired through mergers, a number of "Maui-type basal water tunnels." Dubbed "Maui-type wells," because this type was first utilized on the Valley Island, these mine-like shafts are dug to basal water tables where infiltration tunnels skim fresh water off the underlying salt water. All HC&S wells are unmanned, with electrical equipment in each, pumping water from still, dark tunnels. When all are in operation, they pump a total of 265 million gallons of water a day.

    Maui Agricultural Co. once had a thriving pineapple department. In 1906, Harry Baldwin noted optimistically that pineapples would be a "source of considerable revenue in a short time." In 1932, the department became part of Maui Pineapple Company.

    In the 1930s, both HC&S and Maui Agricultural Co. abandoned steam plows for tractors, and in 1937, HC&S started its first sizeable mechanical harvesting. In 1948, the combined operation of HC&S and Maui Agricultural Co., which had been merged earlier that year, produced 100,792 tons of sugar.

    An immediate benefit of the 1948 merger was more effective use of mountain water in the HC&S upper fields. HC&S also benefited by adopting the Maui Agricultural Co. crop log method which provided a lifelong health chart for cane. Improved yields resulted.

    In 1949, HC&S abandoned its Puunene railroad to make way for the new era of trucking. That year, the first computer system (IBM) was installed on the plantation for payroll preparation.

    Technological progress, historically the key to HC&S success, made impressive headway in the 1950s. HC&S opened the decade by putting into operation a fleet of new Tournahaulers — the largest motor vehicles in Hawaii at the time — used to carry harvested cane to the plantation's two factories.

    In 1951, HC&S had plenty to celebrate and invited all of Maui to join in. During this, the golden anniversary of the Puunene factory, and the 100^th anniversary of the first sugar factory in the area (Spreckelsville), the plantation had broken all records. Its two factories produced 151,408 tons of sugar — Puunene, 91,372 and Paia, 60,036.

    In 1953, came further developments at HC&S — new methods of weed control, push rakes, cane grabs, brooming rake and hopper (the latter two developed by HC&S); and the purchase of Euclid cane haulers.

    HC&S had small but thriving dairy and beef cattle operations for many years (the latter inherited from the Maui Agricultural Co.). The dairy sold pasteurized milk (at 28 cents a quart) for the first time in 1948. HC&S sold its Puunene Dairy to Haleakala Dairy in mid-1951.

    The HC&S ranch department (former Grove Ranch of Maui Agricultural Co.) raised Aberdeen Angus cattle for beef production on some 6,000 acres of land above Haliimaile. By 1951, the ranch also was selling its own Maui Brand feeds. In 1956, HC&S brought cold storage to its slaughterhouse.

    In 1957, HC&S celebrated its 75^th jubilee. Shortly thereafter, the Paia factory "went modern" with installation of the largest bagasse-fired boiler in the world.

    The most significant business event of the 1960s occurred on January 2, 1962, when HC&S was merged with and became a division of Alexander and Baldwin. For A&B, the merger marked an important change in the character of its business — from being a servicing agent to an operating company.

    At the time of the merger, HC&S had three subsidiary companies: East Maui Irrigation Company, Limited; Kahului Railroad Company which it had owned since 1899; and Kahului Development Co., Ltd. These three became subsidiaries of Alexander & Baldwin.

    With the merger in 1962, HC&S changed the "Ltd." at the end of its name to "Inc."
Asa Baldwin, HC&S president, and Edward B. Holroyde, vice president and manager, became vice presidents of Alexander & Baldwin, Inc.

    Between 1961 and 1967, in cooperation with Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, HC&S operated a rum distillery in a Seagram structure adjoining the Puunene factory. Ethanol produced from cane sugar molasses was blended in Seagram’s Leilani brand rum and sold in Hawaii and on the mainland. Seagram’s terminated operations in 1967, and A&B acquired ownership of the distillery in 1976. Maui Distillers, Inc. purchased the plant in 1980, refurbished it, and produced rum for awhile. The company closed in 1986.

    Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. began to strengthen its sugar investments in 1965, and has since then spent millions of dollars for modern equipment.Between 1985 and 1990 both factories were completely computerized, among the first such facilities in the industry to be computer-controlled.

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