One of Hawaii’s oldest and biggest former pineapple producers is getting back into the farming business with a crop used to make tequila in Mexico. Maui Land & Pineapple Co. is ramping up plans to establish an agave tequilana farm on the Valley Isle. The endeavor represents a return to farming for the company 16 years after it ceased pineapple production that a predecessor began in 1903. Kapalua-based MLP said the initiative will honor its agricultural roots and align with a focus to be more productive with thousands of acres of company--owned farmland while also providing more jobs and environmental benefits on Maui using a plant that doesn’t need much water and reduces fire risk on fallow agricultural fields. MLP also noted potential to produce spirits from the crop and build an agritourism business around it. “We believe this new venture represents a significant opportunity to create long-term growth potential for the company … ,” Race Randle, MLP CEO, said in a recent statement announcing the plan. MLP is cultivating over 12,000 baby agave tequilana plants, more commonly known as blue agave or blue Weber agave, in a nursery. Later this year, planting is slated to begin on 120 acres of former pineapple fields in Upcountry Maui. Randle also said during a recent annual stockholders meeting that about 6,500 acres of former pineapple plantation lands owned by the company have potential for similar use. Growing blue agave to make distilled spirits is a long-term prospect because the plants can take around six to nine years to mature for harvesting. However, one entrepreneur on Maui already has demonstrated that it can be viable. Hawaii pioneer Paul Turner, a bike suspension company founder who moved to Maui at about the same time MLP got out of pineapple farming, kind of wandered into blue agave as a crop to grow in Haliimaile where pineapple was once abundant. Turner, who started and later sold RockShox, bought 140 acres of land once partly planted in pineapple from Alexander & Baldwin Inc. with a rough idea to raise some kind of cash crop possibly including citrus or cattle. After planting orange, lemon, lime and pomegranate trees, Turner said he came across someone selling blue agave starter plants online and was intrigued. “I didn’t know much about them,” he said. “I’ve always had a love or affinity for tequila, and so I bought them just as kind of a novelty more than anything else.” Pretty quickly, Turner said, the plants, which are in the same family as asparagus but are succulents, started to thrive. This prompted him to do in-depth research that evolved into a business plan followed by six acres of plants in Haliimaile. A self--fabricated processing and distillery facility began operating three years ago, and finally a tasting room opened in late 2023 under the business and brand name Waikulu Distillery. Stephanie Whalen, a former executive director of the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, said she is unaware of the crop being studied for commercial use in Hawaii. Jensen Uyeda, an associate extension agent with the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, said the long cultivation time makes blue agave challenging as a commercial crop but that obtaining a premium price for spirits made from the plant in Hawaii can be a mitigating factor. “Paul has definitely found his niche and maybe the rest of the industry can build on that,” Uyeda said in an email. Turner said he found former pineapple fields with no irrigation to be very hospitable for his crop, with mature cores that typically weigh 300 to 400 pounds yielding four times the amount of juice than what he found in Mexico. Waikulu Distillery steams the plant cores after hacking off big spiky leaves, and crushes the cooked pieces after cooling to extract juice that then gets fermented and distilled to produce “agave spirits” in different flavors infused by barrel aging or additions such as chili peppers. Such spirits can be labeled tequila only if produced in Mexico. Turner said his operation has a conservative production capacity of 12,000 bottles a year. Everything he makes is sold on Maui, with about half sold at the farm and distillery where 90--minute tours are held two days a week for $65 per person including tasting or $43 without. MLP is well aware of Turner’s achievement, and its planned initial blue agave farm site is nearby. Pineapple decline Pineapple decades ago was Hawaii’s biggest cash crop, with growers mainly on Oahu, Maui, Molokai and Lanai at one time supplying more than 80% of the world market for canned pineapple. On Maui, two brothers descended from missionaries started growing pineapple in Haiku on the island’s northeastern shore in 1890. The venture by Henry Perrine Baldwin and David Dwight Baldwin led to the formation in 1903 of Haiku Fruit & Packing Co., regarded as the start of commercial pineapple farming on Maui. After combinations with other Baldwin companies, Maui Pineapple Co. then led by Maui’s Cameron family became MLP in 1969 and issued shares of publicly traded stock. The company, which owned about 29,000 acres of land on Maui including 12,000 at one time planted in pineapple, diversified into resort and residential development projects that included Kapalua Resort over the next few decades. But all aspects of the business eventually suffered. Statewide, pineapple production peaked in 1955 at 1.5 million tons of fruit grown on 76,700 acres, and a decline had taken hold by 1966 that grew to affect MLP and other big growers including Del Monte, Dole and Hawaiian Fruit Packers. MLP, which in 1999 employed 1,480 people in pineapple production and farmed about 6,000 acres, had difficulty with Hawaii’s high labor, land and transportation costs in the face of competition with lower--cost plantations in Asia and Central America. The company halted pineapple canning in 2007 to concentrate on fresh-fruit operations with a new $20 million packing facility. But two years later MLP harvested its final crop after $115 million in losses from agricultural operations since 2002 and no envisioned turnaround. Returning to roots MLP resort and land development operations also suffered from downturns in tourism and real estate around the same time, forcing the company to sell valuable assets to pay off debt, including two Kapalua golf courses sold in 2009 and 2010 for a combined $74 million. In more recent years, MLP has continued to sell assets while also leasing some of its roughly 22,000 acres of land to others, including pineapple producer Maui Gold Pineapple Co. Overall, relatively little MLP agricultural land is occupied, according to the company, which last year had 15 employees and reported a $7.4 million net loss on $11.6 million in operating revenue. The loss was largely due to employee stock compensation costs, severance paid to a former CEO and higher real estate development and leasing expenses. During the first three months of this year, MLP reported a $8.6 million loss generally driven by the same factors. Randle said in his presentation to shareholders that blue agave farming is a relatively low-cost opportunity to make more productive use of MLP land that is tied to the company’s legacy in agriculture and has high future revenue potential. “Our mission remains to thoughtfully maximize the productivity of our vast portfolio of assets,” he said. “Today our team is proud of this legacy as we continue efforts to reactivate thousands of acres of dormant agricultural land.”