Big Island’s MacFarms of Hawaii Inc., which grows macadamia nuts on 4,000 acres it owns in the Kona area of the Big Island, is likely to be sold soon to an unidentified buyer.
MacFarms likely
to be sold
The unidentified next owner
of the macadamia nut grower
will retain all 189 employees
By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comNone of the 189 employees will be let go if the sale goes through, said Rick Vidgen, MacFarms president. It will be business as usual at the company, which also has a processing and manufacturing plant and an international marketing operation, he said.
The company filed a notice with the state labor department last week because of the number of employees involved, but it was a "plant closing" notice only under the technical terms of the law requiring such notices when businesses are being sold, Vidgen said.
"There is discussion with a prospective buyer but there will be no change to employment or operations and nobody will lose their jobs," said Vidgen, who said he has gone to some lengths to explain that to the workers over the last couple of days.
Vidgen declined to disclose any information about the potential buyer. He said Blue Diamond Growers, a Sacramento, Calif., growers' cooperative that bought the business in 2000, wants to concentrate on its almond business and that means a move away from macadamia nuts.
Blue Diamond is the latest in a series of owners of the business, which was started by a Hawaii partnership in 1981. It was sold in 1986 to Arnott's Biscuits Holdings - a food business in Australia, the native home of macadamia nuts - and in the 1990s Arnott's was acquired by the big U.S.-based food conglomerate, Campbell Soup Co.
Vidgen, an Australian who came to Hawaii with Arnott's, said at the time of the sale to Blue Mountain that MacFarms as an agricultural company wasn't a good fit with Campbell, a manufacturer.
Vidgen said he expects a decision on the pending sale soon but could not say when it might happen.
Meanwhile, MacFarms is solidly aligned with other Hawaii growers in pushing for a federal labeling requirement that would force packagers to disclose the origin of their macadamia nuts, Vidgen said. Some packagers have taken advantage of the product's close association with the islands to market nuts grown elsewhere.