Kauai sugar
workers to
start harvest

It was delayed until
a dispute over a loading
terminal was settled

By Anthony Sommer
Kauai correspondent

LIHUE >> More than 200 Gay & Robinson sugar workers who have not worked for three weeks will go back to work Monday, weather permitting.

They were idled while their employer and Amfac/JMB settled a dispute over the island's only sugar loading terminal.

Gay & Robinson delayed the start-up of this year's harvest, originally scheduled to begin March 26, until the dispute was resolved. Alan Kennett, president and general manager of Gay & Robinson, said a contract was signed Monday and only wet weather kept workers out of the fields this week.

The dispute was over the cost of operating Kauai's only sugar storage and loading facility at Nawiliwili Harbor, which is still owned by Amfac/JMB. All sugar produced on Kauai is sent by ship from Nawiliwili to the C&H Sugar refinery in California.

Technically, the contract is between Amfac/JMB and the Hawaii Sugar and Transport Cooperative, which owns the sugar once it leaves the sugar mills and which owns the ship that transports it to the mainland.

Gay & Robinson signed a supplemental contract, Kennett said. That cleared the way for the harvest to begin.

Gay & Robinson is expecting a record 56,000-ton crop this year. It will be harvesting both its own lands and land formerly leased from the state by Amfac/JMB.

"We have a huge crop to harvest," Kennett said. The harvest normally lasts through October.

Amfac/JMB closed its sugar plantations in Lihue and Kekaha in November, leaving Gay & Robinson as the sole surviving sugar company on Kauai and one of only two remaining in the state.

The other is Alexander & Baldwin's Hawaii Commercial & Sugar Co. on Maui.

The two also are the only remaining members of the HS&TC cooperative.

Up until this year, Amfac/JMB split the cost of operating the Nawiliwili loading facility with Gay & Robinson. Closure of Amfac/JMB's mills left Gay & Robinson as the only user.

Kennett would not reveal the terms of the new agreement with Amfac/JMB.