Posted on: Friday, April 13, 2001

Agreement allows opening of sugar harvesting season

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua‘i Bureau

LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Gay & Robinson will open its sugar harvesting season Monday, weather permitting, after reaching agreements with Amfac Hawai'i for use of its bulk sugar terminal at Nawiliwili Harbor and the delivery of bagasse for fuel at Amfac's Lihu'e power plant.

The start of the harvesting and sugar cane grinding season was delayed for three weeks while the parties hammered out the agreements.

It means almost all of Gay & Robinson's roughly 275 employees will be offered work, said plantation President Alan Kennett. Many had remained on a between-season furlough pending the restart of the harvest season.

The Nawiliwili terminal, once used by several plantations, is used to store Kaua'i's processed sugar before it is loaded via a complex conveyer system onto ships for refining in California. Without access to the terminal, Gay & Robinson would have had no place to store sugar, and no way to get it onto ships.

The terminal was once used by the island's several plantations. Since Amfac went out of the sugar business at its Lihu'e and Kekaha plantations last year, Gay & Robinson's sugar will be the only product passing through it.

Since Gay & Robinson's Olokele Mill can produce more bagasse than it burns to operate, in recent years the firm has been selling it to Amfac for use in the bagasse-fired power plant alongside the Lihu'e Mill. Bagasse is the fibrous residue left after the sweet juice is squeezed out of sugar cane.

Kennett said that if grinding of cane begins Monday, he could have excess bagasse to deliver to the Lihu'e plant as early as the end of the week. The new agreement also allows Amfac to avoid burning oil to produce electricity in the plant, which produces power most efficiently from biomass like bagasse.

The plant's electricity is delivered to Kaua'i Electric for distribution on the island's power grid.