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Paia sugar mill The Paia sugar mill on Maui has received its last load of sugar cane.
processing final shipment
The Maui facility
will close no later
than WednesdayFrom staff and wire reports
Brian Ross, manager of the mill for the past seven years, said the mill has about 600 tons of sugar left to process. That should keep the mill going through tomorrow or Wednesday, after which it will close for good, he said.
Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., the Maui subsidiary of Alexander & Baldwin Inc., announced Sept. 13 that it would close the Paia mill, citing low sugar prices and drought-reduced yields. Processing will continue at its larger Puunene mill and the firm said it will not cut the 37,000 acres it farms on Maui.
However, 52 of the 92 employees at the mill will be laid off, as will 25 HC&S agricultural workers, the company said. The other 40 Paia mill workers will be transferred to Puunene.
When the current mill was installed in the 1970s, it was a prototype for a new cane-milling concept using the diffusion process, Ross said. The mill was once the most efficient in the state, he said. However, the company said that recent low sugar prices and a three-year drought on Maui forced the closing.
Closing of the mill means changes in the way of life for many Paia residents. "We begin to wonder if it's the beginning of the end," said Annette Peters, wife of longtime truck driver Bobby Peters.
A string of shutdowns over the past five years has left Maui and Kauai as the only two islands where sugar is grown and processed. Amfac/JMB Hawaii Inc. has said it will start closing its Kauai sugar business in November, which will soon leave Gay & Robinson as the only sugar producer on that island.