PU'UNENE, Maui — Agribusiness contributes around 5 percent of Alexander & Baldwin Inc.'s revenue — in recent years, around $120 million a year, The Maui News reported today.

Last year, A&B had total revenues of $2.2 billion.

Ag contributes an even smaller percentage of profits — and virtually none in 2007.

In recent years, ag has produced before-tax operating profits of $5 million to $11 million a year. Last year, the number was an insignificant $200,000.

HC&S with sugar, electricity and molasses dominates A&B's ag sector, although Kauai Coffee's 3,000-acre plantation has been expanding its share. In its annual reports, A&B does not break out the contributions of HC&S and Kauai Coffee, but at current prices a 200,000-ton sugar crop would generate about $72 million, not counting revenue from sales of electricity and molasses.

HC&S's crop was well below targets last year, 164,500 tons, with a yield of 9.7 tons per acre harvested. A good year would be over 200,000 tons and something between 12 and 14 tons an acre, but the Maui plantation has been struggling with two straight years of lower-than-normal rainfall.

The profit margins are very thin, around 5 percent. Yet they are profit margins.

Gay & Robinson, the only other cane grower, announced Sept. 10 that it was abandoning sugar after the 2010 harvest, although it is turning over its lands to a grower who intends to continue producing cane for conversion to ethanol.

"Economies of scale work for our benefit," according to HC&S General Manager Frank Kiger. It can make more efficient use of its labor and equipment.

It's also large enough a producer that it can create enough electricity by burning cane waste to run its operations and sell a guaranteed 16 megawatts to Maui Electric Co.

HC&S is farming 35,000 acres in cane, 4.7 times the 7,500 acres Gay & Robinson farms on Kauai. When it announced it will quit farming, Gay & Robinson said it had 225 workers; HC&S has 734 workers.

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