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Del Monte quits pineapple business in 2008

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  • Del Monte quits pineapple business in 2008

    Due to the high cost of doing business, Del Monte announced that it would be shutting down its pineapple growing operation on Oahu at the end of 2008, putting some 700 employees out of work.

    "...Del Monte officials yesterday blamed the end of their Hawai'i presence on two factors: Expansion of less-expensive pineapple production in other parts of the world and the company's inability to extend its current lease.

    "As a result of increased planting of pineapple at lower costs in other parts of the world, the company believes that it will not be economically feasible to continue to produce pineapple in Hawai'i," Del Monte said in a statement.

    "In fact, today it would be cheaper for Del Monte to buy pineapples on the open market than for the company to grow, market and distribute Hawaiian pineapple. The current land lease expires in December 2008. Del Monte has not been successful in obtaining a long-term lease extension of its current land lease agreement."..."

    The next big question will be, what will become of the displaced workers, and what will the Campbell Estate, which owns the majority of the land Del Monte was using, do with the land now?

    Miulang
    "Americans believe in three freedoms. Freedom of speech; freedom of religion; and the freedom to deny the other two to folks they don`t like.” --Mark Twain

  • #2
    Re: Del Monte quits pineapple business in 2008

    I've done a couple of these stories as the sugar plantations shut down and they're never pretty. I'm just lucky my relatives all retired from HC&S long before the mill shut down, ah well.

    The workers will get some sort of retirement stipend which will see them through a little bit, otherwise they'll have to find other forms of labor, maintenance and repair, gardening, etc, etc. The good thing is that plantation life allows them to try their hand at all kinds of skills; driving trucks, repairing equipment, working irrigation systems, etc. The workers in Kauai I interviewed when the sugar mill shut down over there knew they'd work again somewhere, they just weren't sure where.

    Too bad nobody ever followed up on all those plantation workers and asked, "What are they doing now?" or "How are they getting by". Maybe somebody will.

    As for Campbell Estate...what's to stop them from selling all that land to a developer who will build more sought after homes for hard-up Oahu residents who are tired of paying high rent that's almost as much as mortgage payments. Then 20 years from now the children of those communities will have birth defects because of the pesticides used on the land during the plantation days that have since seeped into the water system and there will be some sort of class-action lawsuit filed...

    and so it goes...

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