Haliimaile Pineapple Co. employees work to process fresh pineapples Thursday at the company’s renovated Haliimaile plant. The company closed a former Maui Pineapple Co. processing plant in Kahului and moved to Haliimaile to centralize plantings and packing there, said Vice President Rudy Balala. He said the weather has been “nice but kind of dry,” but replanting is on schedule. Haliimaile Pineapple took over about 1,000 acres when Maui Pineapple shut down at the end of the year. The new company handles about 75 tons of fruit per day, but most of it stays in Hawaii, with about 20 percent sold to customers on the Mainland, Balala said.
