Maui Land & Pineapple
hires former AOL exec
as chief executive
Maui Land & Pineapple has found a new president and chief executive officer in a Hawaii-educated businessman who has led businesses across a variety of industries.
The company said yesterday it appointed David C. Cole, 50, who was raised in Windward Oahu and graduated from the University of Hawaii. For the past 25 years Cole has headed businesses on the mainland in activities including software, Internet services and organic farming.
Cole has also worked for MLP's biggest shareholder, Steve Case, as an officer of America Online Inc. from 1994 to 1997, after AOL acquired the online publishing software firm Cole headed, NaviSoft Inc., but before the online firm merged with Time Warner.
Cole's immediate problem will be to try to turn around MLP's pineapple business, which was the prime reason for the company's $4.7 million loss in the first half of this year.
Cole is more than up to that task, said David Heenan, MLP chairman and head of the search committee tasked with finding a replacement for Gary Gifford, who retired as president and chief executive officer in May. Donald Young has been interim chief executive.
"(Cole) is sort of an ideal guy who combines the head and the heart" the company needs, Heenan said.
"He has been very versatile in the industries that he has been able to work in," Heenan said. "On the heart side, he has a great passion, great care, for the people of Hawaii. That will clearly spill over to the work force and the Maui community."
Cole, who moves into the new post Oct. 15, is chairman of Sunnyside Farms LLC, which produces organic fruits, vegetables, flowers, meat and eggs on a 500-acre farm in Washington, Va.
Before that he was chairman and CEO of Ashton-Tate, an early player in database software, and then chairman, president and CEO of NaviSoft.
He was president of AOL's Internet Services Co. and later president of the AOL new enterprises group. He has also been a significant investor in technology companies.
His community activities include a close involvement in the Nature Conservancy, where he has served as a director. He was also a director of the World Wildlife Fund.
Cole said his challenge is to "find a way to move our operations into economically attractive markets" and he would like to change the "P" in MLP "from pineapple to polyculture."
That means adding other products to the company's pineapple base, he said.
MLP, which has about 1,800 employees, operates the only pineapple cannery in the United States and owns about 28,600 acres of land on Maui, including the Kapalua Resort in West Maui.
