Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company

Hawaiian Pineapple Company was capitalized in 1901 who $16,240. It is small company but the timing and connections were impeccable.

Fresh graduate from Harvard, James Drummond Dole converted a 44 by 80—foot barn in Wahiawa into cannery and using some crude, hand operated equipment , began canning the pineapples from his homestead.

Dole’s company employees invented machines to streamline the pineapple’s canning, including a feeder and slicer to cut into uniform shapes and sizes, an ‘eradicator’ to scrape the skin clean of its flesh and juice.

In 1903, James Dole’s first batch of canned pineapples filled 1893 cases with each case contained 24 cans of pineapple: each can weight two pounds. The year after that this figure shot up to 8,810 cases.

Dole moved his pineapple cannery to Honolulu in 1907, and placed ads in US magazines to promote the fruit, undertaking one of the first nationwide consumer ad campaigns in America.

James Dole’s idea to advertise pineapple under multiple labels was so successful that between 1910 and 1911 pineapple consumption quadruple, and production increased fr0m 300,000 cases in 1911 to 600,000 in 1913 and over a million in 1918.

In 1922, Dole purchased nearly the entire island of Lanai, making it the largest pineapple in the world.

Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company was later acquired by Hawaii agriculture firm Castle & Cooke. David Murdock, a Los Angles billionaire, took over Castle & Cooke in the mid 1980 and changed the brand name back to Dole Food to capitalize in name recognition.
Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company