Kauai’s coffee estate includes more than four million coffee trees on 3,000 acres along the southern border of the Hawaiian island. According to their website, the company produces between one and two million pounds of green coffee per year Kauai Waipee is the largest producer in the entire United States. But they may close soon. A lease dispute threatened to permanently close the farm at the end of March.
As reported Guard todayLease talks began almost two years ago, but little came of them. Neither Kauai coffee nor Massimo Zanetti USA drinkthe global coffee producer that bought the farm in 2011 (and also owns Maxwell House and Hills Bros.) owns the land on which Kauai operates. They had been leasing the land from Alexander & Baldwin since the 1980s. Then in 2022, A&B first sold over 18,000 acres to Colorado-based investments Capitol Brue Baukol Partners for $74 million, which includes Kauai Coffee farmland.
Speculation about Kauai Coffee’s uncertain future intensified in 2024 when the land it leased came up for sale – at the same time Brue Baukol said it had “engaged constructively and in good faith with Massimo Zanetti Beverage” on the lease, a company spokesman said.
But eleventh-hour savings aside, Kauai Coffee’s future is all but determined. March 31ststreet this year, the lease will expire and the company and its 141 employees will have to close. What happens next is unknown.
In a speech before city council, Kauai Coffee senior advisor Wayne Katayama states that authorities are still actively working to find a solution, but the reality is that they must also prepare for an alternative solution. Employees are unsure if or when they will be laid off or whether they will be offered any severance pay. It is still unknown what will happen to the land. Brue Baukol says he would like it to remain a coffee plantation, but removing Kauai Coffee removes anyone with operational knowledge. The modern owners, if the land is sold, will not be able to plug and play, to the detriment of the coffee plantation itself.
Katayama tells city council he at least hopes to negotiate a longer timeline for the transition to a potentially relocated Kauai Coffee. “The ideal situation would be a break of two years or more,” he says. “It would allow us to create something that doesn’t destroy our people or our communities, and it will assist us transition better.” Katayama also hopes to develop some type of “asset purchase agreement.” Otherwise, all equipment that they cannot move themselves by the end of the lease will be considered abandoned and will be forfeited.
