A year after purchasing more than 1,600 scenic acres near Naalehu, Ka‘u Royal Hawaiian Coffee &Tea is formulating its long-term vision for the property.
A year after purchasing more than 1,600 scenic acres near Naalehu, Ka‘u Royal Hawaiian Coffee &Tea is formulating its long-term vision for the property.
The small limited-partnership company purchased the land — formerly a sugar plantation — last January for about $7 million. Eventually it plans to grow coffee, tea and other fruits and vegetables, and is eyeing its first harvest within three to five years, said company General Manger Louis Leong.
The company plans to invest another $20 million in the venture. The money will be used partly to build a coffee mill capable of processing up to 400 acres of coffee, and a tea-processing plant capable of processing between 300 to 400 acres of tea, Leong said, though it does not expect to produce at full output immediately.
The company also plans to build a visitors center and offer public tours of processing facilities.
“We formed a company just for this project, so it’s a brand new venture for us,” said Leong, adding the company’s owner, California-based Eva Liu, has a special interest in growing tea. “We’d like to add an (agricultural tourism) aspect to the project later on, after we build our coffee mill and tea processing (facilities) so we can introduce the tea culture to more people locally. Hopefully, we’ll have a very special commercial tea farm, and people can enjoy the harvesting and processing aspect of tea production.”
Coffee and tea probably will be grown for global distribution, Leong said, but other crops might be sold locally.
The company has one Hawaii-based representative and four employees based in California. But Leong said it eventually hopes to bolster the local economy with jobs: It is seeking to hire a land manager and hopes to lease land in the future to local farmers to grow crops. It also hopes to hire seasonal workers for harvesting, Leong said.
“We’ve learned that after the collapse of the sugar industry, a lot of farmers have (to go) far to find jobs,” he said. “So if we can create opportunities and have workers in the farm industry, they don’t have to travel as far now.”
Company leaders are also developing a senior care center on Oahu, which is slated to open in April. Leong said it’s also brainstorming a name change, because the current name — chosen to honor the land’s royal Hawaiian connection — “is too long and too hard to put in documents.”
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune- herald.com.