[ SWEET LEGACY ]

The future is sweet
for Gay & Robinson

The firm expects to reap a near-record
sugar crop of 56,000 tons next year

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By Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.com

MAKAWELI, Kauai >> The biggest sugar crop Gay & Robinson ever had was 57,000 tons in 1987.

"It was the best year for sugar everywhere in Hawaii," said Alan Kennett, president and general manager of Gay & Robinson. "The rainfall and all of the factors were exactly right."

Next year, Gay & Robinson hopes to be close to the record with 56,000 tons. In 2004, with the first harvest of cane growing on 4,000 acres of state land formerly farmed by Amfac, it hopes to produce a whopping 69,000-ton crop.

Sugar may be dead in much of Hawaii, but someone forgot to tell the Robinson family, which has owned the land since 1864 and grown sugar on it since 1889. Year after year, Gay & Robinson's land produces the highest sugar cane yield anywhere in the world: an average of 14.2 tons per acre.

"I believe we're the only company in Hawaii that has added 50 people to the payroll since 9/11, and we plan to hire even more next year," Kennett said.

Next year will be an important year for Gay & Robinson. Along with Alexander & Baldwin, it is one of the two surviving members of the Hawaii Sugar and Transportation Cooperative, which owns the ship that takes the sugar still produced on Kauai and Maui to C&H Sugar's San Francisco refinery.

PHOTO COURTESY OF GAY & ROBINSON A look back at how the plantation was run in the 1930s includes this horse-drawn wagon.

The current contract requires that all sugar produced by Gay & Robinson be sold to C&H. But that contract ends in 2003, and Kennett and the Robinson family are determined that any new pact will allow Gay & Robinson to sell on the world market as well.

Gay & Robinson is the last family-owned sugar plantation in Hawaii.

Elizabeth Sinclair, the matriarch of the family, purchased Niihau from the Hawaiian monarch in 1864 and moved her family there from New Zealand. A year later, she bought a large tract of land near Waimea, Kauai.

In 1884, two of her grandsons, Aubrey Robinson and Francis Gay, formed Gay & Robinson to raise cattle and grow sugar.

STAR-BULLETIN / 1999 A crane claw drops a load of freshly cut cane into a hopper outside the Gay & Robinson mill. Each hour in April and October, 120 tons of sugar cane goes into this end of the mill and comes out the other end as 17 tons of raw sugar.

Until recently the family farmed only a portion of its land and leased much of it to Alexander & Baldwin and later C. Brewer.

The structure of the Robinson family's business actually involves two entities. All of the land is owned by the Robinson Family Trust, which is governed by a 13-member board, all of them Robinsons. It is the Robinson Family Trust that is developing a major new resort around the family's holdings at Kapalawai.

Gay & Robinson is the family's primary business arm, and it leases 99 percent of the Robinson Family Trust land.

The island of Niihau and Niihau Ranch, where the family first settled in Hawaii, do not belong to the entire Robinson clan. The island is owned by brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson, both of whom sit on the board of Robinson Family Partners.

Gay & Robinson is in the process of diversifying its business, but Kennett said sugar will "always remain the core business."

Gay & Robinson Founded: 1884 by cousins Francis Gay and Aubrey Robinson and still controlled by the Robinson Family Business: One of two remaining sugar plantations in Hawaii Operation: The most productive sugar land (on a tons-per-acre basis) in the world Landowner: Largest on Kauai with 51,000 acres Future: Plans to expand to include electricity generation, ethanol production and sale of sugar to Asian markets Current: In the process of taking over sugar lands in West Kauai formerly leased from the state by Amfac/JMB