Alexander & Baldwin

Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. (nasdaq|ALEX) is a Honolulu-based company that was once part of the Big Five companies in territorial Hawaii. The company today operates businesses in shipping, sugar cane, real estate, and diversified agriculture. It is also the only "Big Five" company that still cultivates sugar cane. It remains one of the State of Hawaii's largest private landowners, owning about 89,000 acres (370 km²) throughout the state. In addition, the company owns over a dozen income properties in the continental United States.

Alexander & Baldwin has its headquarters in downtown Honolulu at the Alexander & Baldwin Building, which was built in 1929.

History

Before Annexation

Dwight Baldwin (Durham, Connecticut) and Charlotte Fowler Baldwin were sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) as medical missionaries to first the Sandwich Islands, then to the Hawaiian Islands in 1831. Reverend William Alexander and Mary McKinney Alexander arrived the following year in 1832.

Alexander & Baldwin was founded by their sons Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin as Samuel T Alexander & Co., in 1870. The two purchased 561 acres (2.3 km²) of land on the island of Maui between Paia and Makawao, on which they began to cultivate sugar cane.

The land the partners cultivated was semi-arid, not ideal for growing sugar cane, a crop that required lots of water. Samuel Alexander realized that miles away on the windward slopes of Haleakala, rain was plentiful. Thus, he designed a 17-mile long irrigation ditch that diverted water from that part of Haleakala to their plantation. Work started on the ditch in 1876 and was completed two years later in 1878.

After the completion of the ditch, the company grew and was eventually renamed Alexander & Baldwin Plantation. Between 1872 and 1900, the company gradually took over more land and sugar mill operations. In 1898, Alexander and Baldwin purchased a controlling interest in one of its rival companies, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company (HC&S). By 1899, the company had bought out Maui’s two main railroad lines (Kahului Railroad Company and Maui Railroad & Steamship Company). In 1900, the company incorporated and was renamed Alexander & Baldwin, Ltd.

The Big Five Era

Following incorporation, the company continued to prosper. It came to be one of Hawaii’s Big Five companies which held a virtual oligarchy over Hawaii’s economy during the region’s territorial years. In this period, the company entered many new businesses and controlled more than 100,000 acres (400 km²) of land in the Territory.

In 1905, Alexander & Baldwin and other Big Five companies took control of the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C&H), giving Alexander & Baldwin a factory where they could refine its sugar.

Over the following decades, the company opened or bought out sugar operations at Puunene, Kahuku, and Kauai as well as pineapple operations on Maui and Kauai. In 1908, the company bought a portion of the Matson Navigation Company, a major shipping line operating in the territory. The company sold its sugar interests on Kauai and consolidated all of its Maui operations into an enlarged Hawaii Commercial & Sugar Company in the 1930s while continuing its pineapple operations as well as its sugar plantation in Kahuku until the 1960s.

Following World War II, the company entered a new business: land development and real estate. The company formed a new subsidiary, the Kahului Development Co., to develop housing in the Kahului area. In the following years, the company became more involved in the development of land that it owned and the Kahului Development Co. became A&B Properties, Inc.

In 1962, the company purchased all outstanding interests in the Hawaii Commercial & Sugar Company and the sugar operation became wholly owned by Alexander & Baldwin. In 1964, the company also bought out the interests in Matson Navigation Company held by three of its fellow "Big Five" competitors: American Factors, C. Brewer & Co., and Castle & Cooke. In 1969, the company purchased all remaining, outstanding shares in Matson and the shipping company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alexander & Baldwin.

Diversification

In recent decades, the company’s development and real estate division has grown as A&B Properties developed new residential and commercial projects on other land the company owned. The company’s Matson division also expanded. In addition, Alexander & Baldwin entered diversified agriculture, beginning to cultivate coffee and macadamia nuts in the 1980s.

List of businesses owned by Alexander & Baldwin, Inc.

*East Maui Irrigation Co., Ltd. (maintains irrigation ditches originally built in the 1870s as noted above)
*Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company (sugar growing division)
*Matson Navigation Co., Inc. (shipping company)
**Matson Integrated Logistics
**Matson Terminals, Inc.
*A & B Properties, Inc. (real estate and development company)
*Maui Brand Sugars (sugar brand)
*Kauai Coffee Company, Inc. (coffee brand and plantation)
*Kauai Commercial Company, Inc. (freight trucking)

ee also

*Economy of Hawaii

External links

* [http://www.alexanderbaldwin.com Alexander & Baldwin official website]
* [http://www.alexanderbaldwin.com/corphist.htm Alexander & Baldwin company history]
* [http://www.abprop.com A&B Properties, Inc. official website]