Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar produces so much molasses that the veteran Maui company says it likely would find another way to export the thick liquid off-island if Matson ceases to ship it.
HC&S runs the state’s last surviving sugar mill and sells molasses — a byproduct of sugar-refining — as a cattle feed additive on the mainland. It produced about 50,500 tons of the viscous liquid in 2012, and that’s far more than could be consumed in Hawaii in a year alone, company officials say.
However, Matson’s molasses shipments stopped last week when 233,000 gallons of the syrupy product spilled from a faulty pipe into Honolulu Harbor, killing hundreds of coral heads so far and prompting cleanup crews to collect some 26,000 dead fish and other marine life from the harbor and around Keehi Lagoon. Matson has claimed responsibility for the disaster and continues to investigate exactly how the leak occurred.
"HC&S needs to ship its molasses off island," HC&S General Manager Rick Volner said in a statement Wednesday. "If Matson is not able to resume its molasses operations at Sand Island, and HC&S’ Maui storage capacity is fully consumed, HC&S will seek to ship molasses directly out of Kahului, bypassing Honolulu."
Matson moves the molasses from Maui to Honolulu by barge, where it’s stored in two 10,500-ton capacity tanks at Sand Island. It’s the only company to ship molasses from Hawaii in bulk.
Before the spill it exported as much as 2,000 tons of the heavy liquid each week to Oakland, Calif.
Matson President and CEO Matt Cox said the company won’t resume those exports unless it can properly safeguard against a recurring spill. He also said it’s too early to tell whether the steps needed to prevent a future leak will make it worth Matson’s effort to resume molasses exports.
Volner said HC&S would likely keep exporting molasses even if Matson decided to stop that operation. However, "the financial impact of alternative shipping solutions has yet to be determined," he added.
The spill was reported Sept. 9 and traced back to a faulty, corroded pipe under Pier 52 that state officials say is owned by Matson. Officials with the company say the pipe had not been used for years, but that it was connected to a pipeline used to pump the molasses from the tanks onto Matson vessels.
State and federal officials responding to the spill said Wednesday that they’re seeing noticeable improvements in waters around the spill, with much of the molasses dissipating into the open ocean. But the waters around the airport’s Reef Runway and a boathouse at Keehi Lagoon remain discolored, they added.
A dive survey on Tuesday of the area about 200 feet around the pipe where the leak occurred found no visible evidence of molasses, according to the Coast Guard.
However, the largest concentration of coral in Honolulu Harbor has already been killed by the spill, and state and federal officials are already working to draft a mitigation plan for the damage done. They also continue to test the water conditions at 15 sites in Honolulu Harbor and Keehi Lagoon.
———
Star-Advertiser reporter Nanea Kalani contributed to this report.
