James Dole - Hawaiian Pineapple Company

Hawaiian Pineapple Company

His farm grew and Dole constructed a cannery and packing plant in the town of Wahiawa. Soon, yields and popularity of his product proved greater than he expected and Dole built a new cannery and packing plant near Honolulu Harbor. That same year, 1907, Dole purchased magazine advertisements to promote his canned pineapples. He developed the first nationwide consumer ad campaign in the United States and was successful. Demand for Hawaiian pineapple grew even more.

In 1913, Dole invested in a new machine invented by Henry G. Ginaca. The Ginaca machine could peel and core thirty-five pineapples every minute. Before the invention, Dole had to contend with the slow pace of having hundreds of workers peel and core each pineapple by hand. With a fully mechanized outfit, Dole's business boomed once more. Rival pineapple companies slowly began to adopt the Ginaca machine, seeing how much Dole improved his business with the introduction of new technologies. During this period, the Hawaiian pineapple sector was at its most profitable as various small companies operating on comparatively modern small land made middling income for the operators. However, this was about to change as Dole was soon to corner the market and turn it into single mighty industry dominated by a small group of companies who mass produced the fruit for the rest of the global market.

By 1922, Dole had managed to convince his family's network in Hawaii and in Boston to arrange for a sizable capital investment fund with which he purchased the island of Lānaʻi and developed it as a vast pineapple plantation. It became the largest plantation in the world with over 20,000 acres (80 km²) devoted exclusively to growing pineapple. Utilizing large mechanized production and importing large numbers of foreign workers which were paid at indentured servitude levels, Dole managed to reduce the price of his pineapples to such a level that it drove every other producer out of the business which didn't fall into line with his scheme. With this vast pineapple acreage at the company's disposal, throughout the 20th century, Lānaʻi produced over seventy-five percent of the world's pineapple crop, thereby dominating the market, and in turn, the place acquired the nickname of Pineapple Island. Dole also purchased land on the island of Maui.

In 1927, inspired by Charles A. Lindbergh's successful trans-Atlantic flight, and seeing the potential air transportation could play in delivering his fruit thereby making an end-run around what remained of his competitors' in the Matson Navigation Company, Dole sponsored the Dole Air Race, putting up a prize of US$25,000 for the first airplane to fly from Oakland, California to Honolulu, and US$10,000 for second place. Those prizes were won by the only two airplanes to survive the flight. Ten other people died in their attempts. However, the race opened up the air-travel business to Hawaii and Dole quickly developed the contacts necessary to put a stranglehold on that commercial sector.

However, this investments in land, mechanization, and finally air transportation combined with the resulting decrease in the price of pineapples, placed the company in a vulnerable price position. Since pineapples take two years to grow to maturity, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the resulting decrease in demand, caused the company to lose money. By December 1932 Dole was removed from management of the company and replaced by Atherton Richards. At that time, Castle & Cooke took a stake in the company.