The Brewer Environmental Industries operation at Puhi will lose $3 million a year in revenues as a result of the closing of Amfac Sugar Kaua’i next month. Because of that fact, the company will examine its planned future on the
The Brewer Environmental Industries operation at Puhi will lose $3 million a
year in revenues as a result of the closing of Amfac Sugar Kaua’i next
month.
Because of that fact, the company will examine its planned future on
the island, said Steve Knox, president and chief executive officer of Brewer
(BEI).
He said he isn’t sure if the loss of Amfac’s business will result in
a loss of jobs at BEI on the island.
“So I really can’t comment” on whether
jobs at BEI will be lost “until we’ve completed our assessment,” Knox said.
“We’re in the process of analyzing our whole outlook for the island of Kaua’i,
for the BEI branch.”
BEI supplies Amfac with fertilizers, crop-control
maintenance needs like pesticides and herbicides, and industrial chemicals for
the sugar cane processing plant, he said.
“Well, they’re one of our biggest
customers, so this definitely will make an impact on us. But we’re certainly
going to be there for the rest of the Kaua’i ag industry, to support them,”
Knox said.
“You kind of saw signs of this coming, creeping up. So it’s not
a total surprise, although any time agriculture goes south on us, we’re
saddened by that, as all the islands should be,” he continued. “It’s part of
our heritage that’s going away. So we’ll adjust to it, and probably changes
will be made in our operation. I just can’t comment on what they are right
now.”
“It’ll mean a loss of sales, definitely,” said Steve Takahashi,
general manager of PS&D (Pacific Service & Development Corp.), the NAPA Auto
Parts dealer on the island. His company will feel the loss not only in terms of
sales to both the Hanama’ulu and Kekaha shops of Amfac Sugar Kaua’i, “but the
employees and their families as well” who buy auto parts, tires and other goods
from PS&D.
“Some of our customers who service them, as well, will be
impacted. So, it’s more than just Amfac Sugar, the company themselves,”
Takahashi said.
PS&D sells Amfac tires, filters and parts for its trucks,
Takahashi said when asked if the departure of Amfac will hit sales to the point
where PS&D would have to cut back on its workforce. “We’re hoping that we won’t
have to do that. But we won’t be able to tell until they close, and how people
are affected by it.
“In the beginning, people will still have their
severance and unemployment, but once some of those things run out and there
aren’t any other jobs that they can pick up, then the impact to us is
broadened.”
“It’s certainly going to have an impact on us in the short
term,” said Roger Cable, sales manager for Senter Petroleum. Senter sells Amfac
all of its diesel fuel, lubricants and other petroleum products.
“It’s a
very sizable customer for us,” he said.
“When McBryde (Sugar) closed down
their operation, being a large-volume customer for us, it caused some
short-term reductions in our volumes,” Cable said. “But, hopefully, what we’ll
find is that this acreage will be replaced with other types of projects that
will generate new income for us, with farmers and other people.
“So, we
look at a short-term reduction with optimism towards looking at future business
to replace that as time goes on. We’re dealing with history now. We’ve seen it
happen with McBryde when McBryde went out of sugar and closed the mill down.
They, of course had coffee going at that time, and coffee is a much different
consumer of petroleum products than sugar for us. It’s a very short term of
production. Their harvest time is a very, very short period, whereas sugar was
a much longer period. And it’s a smaller consumer of petro products.”
Cable
said Senter will “feel the affect of that large-volume customer going away.
Hopefully, Gay & Robinson will take a portion of it up, and hopefully there’ll
be other uses of the (Amfac) property.”
Since Senter Petroleum is a small
employer to begin with, Cable said he doesn’t think the closing of Amfac will
lead to a reduction of Senter’s workforce.
On the west side, which has
survived the closing of McBryde Sugar and the consolidation of Olokele Sugar
into Gay & Robinson, the business community has seen the coming closure of the
former Kekaha Sugar for some time, and is fairly well insulated from the
economic impacts to continuing businesses, said Scot Tsuchiyama, manager and
treasurer of the Kekaha Federal Credit Union.
“We will survive sugar, and
we hope our members will, too,” said Tsuchiyama. The credit union has around
1,400 members, and he estimates only around 100 of those are plantation
employees.
He doesn’t foresee any Kekaha businesses closing their doors as
a result of ASK closing theirs.
Within the last few years, Kekaha Sugar
celebrated its 100th anniversary in business, and the Kekaha Federal Credit
Union, which used to be located inside the Kekaha Sugar office building,
celebrated its 60th.
The credit union has been preparing for the closing of
ASK for at least a decade, moving into its own building, offering different
services like credit cards, mortgages, individual retirement accounts,
certificates of deposit and other products, and expanding fields of membership
to lessen dependence on sugar workers, he said.
Tsuchiyama said St.
Theresa’s School officials have expressed concern about whether plantation
families will be able to continue to pay tuition to send their children to the
Catholic school, which has grades kindergarten through eight.
But
Tsuchiyama has seen the town of Kekaha, with a population of between 3,500 and
3,700 people and only about 200 of those affiliated with ASK,
changing.
It’s not plantation workers who are buying or building homes in
Kekaha, but a “whole different class” of people, he said.
“Its a whole,
brand new world. It’s not business as usual,” he concluded.
Staff
Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at [
HREF=”mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net”>pcurtis@pulitzer.net]or 245-3681 (ext.
224).
Staff photo by Dennis Fujimoto
