I talked story with some of the 65 workers whose jobs were saved at Hali’imaile Pineapple Company on Mau
Case will chair Exclusive Resorts board – Pacific Business News
Exclusive Resorts announced Tuesday that AOL co-founder Steve Case has become chairman of its board of directors.
Case also will lead a $20 million round of new equity financing for the luxury destination club.
Case, who has served on Exclusive Resorts’ board since investing in the company in 2003, acquired majority ownership in 2004.
Exclusive Resorts has more than 3,000 members and a real estate portfolio valued at more than $1 billion. The Denver-based club was founded in 2002.
Case grew up in Honolulu and graduated from Punahou School. He is the majority shareholder of Maui Land & Pineapple Co. (NYSE: MLP) and serves on its board of directors.
Case also owns Grove Farm, one of Kauai’s largest private landowners, and is chairman and CEO of Revolution, a market investment firm.
Case will chair Exclusive Resorts board – Pacific Business News (Honolulu):
ML&P names Churchill president and COO – Pacific Business News
Maui Land & Pineapple Co. has named Ryan L. Churchill president and chief operating officer of the Kahului-based company.
Churchill, who has served as senior vice president of corporate development since 2007, will be responsible for day-to-day operations of ML&P (NYSE:MLP) and its operating divisions of Kapalua Land Co. Ltd., Community Development and Asset Management.
In his previous role in corporate development, he was responsible for executing the company’s strategic transactions and managing its real estate holdings and development projects.
Churchill, who joined ML&P in 2000, also has served as vice president of community development, vice president of planning for the company’s resort segment, Kapalua Land Co., and as development manager.
“Ryan has a proven leadership record on a number of key projects for the company,” ML&P Chairman and interim CEO Warren H. Haruki said in a prepared statement. “His keen management skills, his ability to work effectively with others, and his deep sense of commitment to our community make him a solid choice for this key executive position.”
Before joining ML&P, Churchill worked for KPMG LLP in Honolulu and with Fieldstone Communities, a home builder in southern California.
The Kailua native is a graduate of the University of Arizona in Tucson and holds an MBA from the University of California, Irvine.
ML&P names Churchill president and COO – Pacific Business News (Honolulu):
Summary of MAUI LAND & PINEAPPLE CO INC – Yahoo! Finance
Form 8-K for MAUI LAND & PINEAPPLE CO INC
11-Feb-2010
Change in Directors or Principal Officers, Financial Statements and
Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Principal Officers; Election of
Directors; Appointment of Principal Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.(c) On February 8, 2010, the Board of Directors of Maui Land & Pineapple Company, Inc. (the "Company") appointed Ryan L. Churchill (age 38) as President and Chief Operating Officer for the term of office that expires in May 2011. Mr. Churchill served as Senior Vice President/Corporate Development of the Company since March 2007, and as Vice President/Community Development from November 2005 to March 2007. He was Vice President/Planning of Kapalua Land Company, Ltd., the operating subsidiary responsible for the Company’s Community Development and Resort segments, from June 2004 to November 2005 and Development Manager from October 2000 to June 2004.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – Mauinews.com – The Maui News
ECONOMIC DIVERSITY IS KEY TO HC&S’ SURVIVAL
It’s the last one standing, clinging to an antiquated "plantation" era, which is long gone. Current news has focused on many issues, but the most important one may be the ability of this company and its workers to diversify.
Visionary co-partners could provide capital and technology, while HC&S provides land, leases and the work force. Ideas for diversity could be some of the following:
- Eliminate the middlemen and process locally the many varieties of confectionery and food sugars utilized throughout the world.
- Eco-agricultural tourism; this is a huge, virtually untapped market for Maui visitors. Co-develop a plantation-era camp with the new Hali’imaile Pineapple owners, complete with country stores, bakery and museum. An immersion package would spotlight sugar and pineapple history, production, fields, museum and products.
- Grow bamboo to manufacture construction products, high-end flooring, furniture and cabinetry, all produced in a local factory with Maui workers.
- Develop least-productive lands into revenue-producing energy farms. Solar, wind and solar thermal energy would be harvested and space for future algae biofuels secured. Additional lands could provide light industrial tracts for local businesses to lease.
- Become a Pacific region leader in agricultural food production. Vertical farming could be accomplished in glass, multistory hydroponic greenhouses with rotating produce beds. Units would be tied into the energy farms and water produced by atmospheric water generators.
HC&S is teetering on a fiscal precipice. The question is, are they willing and able to do something about it?
Mike Cummings
Waiehu
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – The Maui News
SUPPORT NEW COMPANY BY BUYING PINEAPPLE
Well, it’s a new year and the first thing I would like to do is say thank you to all involved in the new Haliimaile Pineapple venture. Kudos to all for keeping this legacy alive and the jobs that go with it.
I will buy one pineapple a week, and I urge the rest of the Maui community to do so as well. We must help prove that agriculture can thrive here on Maui, so I ask all of you to join me in this.
Big mahalo to the Erdmans and everyone involved.
Just one pineapple a week: I will, will you?
Tim Garcia
Makawao
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News
Exotic-Food Tasting on Hawaii, the Big Island – New York Times
Hilo, Hawaii — CHERIMOYA, calamansi, rainbow papaya. Puna ricotta, poha berries, lilikoi. Lava salsa, dinosaur kale, Hamakua mushrooms. This is the exotic-food litany on the lips of pilgrims who go to the Hilo Farmers Market, held twice a week on the lush eastern side of the Big Island.
Hawaii More Photos »
On a Saturday in mid-December I was in the greedy throng, caressing a cluster of longan, or “dragon eye” fruit; sampling a fresh, made-to-order green papaya salad; sidling up for a whiff of ripe, fragrant mango.
The Big Island, a k a Hawaii, is the biggest agricultural producer in the state. But its farming history is one of immigrant fruit — produce that is itself a pilgrim. Virtually everything that is grown in the Hawaiian islands today is an exotic, brought in from somewhere else by sailors, merchants and contract laborers; pineapple, long seen as Hawaii’s signature fruit, was introduced to the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1813 by Don Francisco de Paula y Marin, a Spanish adviser to King Kamehameha I.
On my December visit I set off in search of unusual agritourism experiences from a recent wave of Big Island farms. Though agricultural production has been geared largely toward industrial export and plantation-scale production over the last century and a half — entire crops of bananas, pineapple, macadamia nuts and sugar cane were shipped overseas, while almost everything else had to be flown in from the mainland — that mindset is shifting.
Let’s start doing more to develop local agriculture | The Honolulu Advertiser
Fifty years after statehood, most of the plantations have gone fallow or become "gentleman’s estates." There are 6,500 "farmers" in Hawai’i, but only half are full time. The average farmer is 59, with an annual income of $10,000.
Ignoring the need for food security, we import at least 85 percent of our food and send billions to faraway agribusinesses when we could keep the money here to strengthen our self-sufficiency, enrich our economy and employ our jobless.
We were once a world leader in agricultural production. Now farmers have overwhelming challenges in land, water, infrastructure, pests, NIMBY, encroachment, transportation costs and burdensome bureaucracy, not to mention cheap foreign competition.
Can agriculture survive in Hawai’i?
Details of pineapple deal are released – The Maui News
WAILUKU – Maui Land & Pineapple Co. sold its pineapple operation to the new Haliimaile Pineapple Co. for less than a third of its value, according to a report by ML&P.
In the filing dated Dec. 31, ML&P disclosed that it sold Haliimaile Pine its equipment, materials, supplies and customer lists valued at about $3 million for a price tag of $680,000, to be paid over five years.
The agreement, signed New Year’s Eve between the two companies, also granted Haliimaile Pine the exclusive rights to use Maui Pineapple Co. logos and trade names for a license fee based on sales volumes that would be around $20,000 to $30,000 each year.