Royal Hawaiian Orchards may not be a household name yet for macadamia nut snacks, but the company aims to double the number of stores carrying its packages of flavored macadamias to about 20,000 this year.

The Hilo-based company, formerly known as ML Macadamia Orchards LP, declared major advancements Tuesday in its ambitious transformation from Hawaii’s largest grower and seller of raw macadamia nuts to a major player in the nut snack foods industry last year.

However, the shift continues to come at a growing financial expense, the company said in an annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Royal Hawaiian more than doubled revenue from its branded line of sweet and savory macadamia snacks to $5.4 million last year from $2.1 million the year before. That offset a roughly $1 million decline in farming and raw nut sale revenue, and raised total revenue to $16 million from $13.8 million.

Yet the cost of expanding into retail snack production also grew, and widened the company’s net loss to $6.2 million last year from $3.7 million the year before.

One bright spot that Royal Hawaiian noted is that it had $178,000 in positive cash flow from operations last year compared with a $2.9 million negative cash flow the year before.

Royal Hawaiian embarked on establishing a retail snack brand in 2012, and now uses nearly all its nuts for the initiative.

Previously, the company typically sold all its nuts to Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corp., a well-established snack maker that candy industry giant Hershey Co. sold to Hono­lulu-based Hawaiian Host Inc. for $38 million in February. (Hershey bought Mauna Loa in 2004 for $130 million.)

Royal Hawaiian expects to continue investing heavily to secure its foothold in retail snacks, including completion of a nut-drying facility where an initial phase was finished in November. A second phase that gives Royal Hawaiian the ability to dry all the nuts it farms is scheduled for completion this year.

Drying is a critical step because freshly harvested nuts will rapidly deteriorate without drying and cannot be sent to processors off Hawaii island unless they are dried.

Initial financing for the wholesale-to-retail shift was raised by Royal Hawaiian selling company partnership units that trade like stock shares. The sale early last year raised about $9 million.

On Friday, Royal Hawaiian arranged additional financing that includes a roughly $5 million loan and a line of credit raised to $9 million from $5 million with farm industry lender American AgCredit.

Some of the additional capital will be used to expand the drying facility and retail channels, the company said.

At the end of last year, Royal Hawaiian snacks were in about 10,000 stores, and the company expects to double that this year.

Getting a fledgling product into stores is expensive. Royal Hawaiian had expenses last year that included $675,000 for slotting fees that buy space on store shelves, $385,000 for promotions, $299,000 for discounts and $155,000 for sales returns and reclamation charges.

"We anticipate that promotional activities will continue to impact our net sales," the company said in the report.

On the farming side of Royal Hawaiian’s business, macadamia production totaled about 18 million pounds last year, or about 60 percent of Hawaii’s commercial macadamia crop.

Production was down from nearly 22 million pounds the prior year due to losses from Tropical Storm Iselle, insect damage, an orchard sale and stunted flowering conditions.

The orchard sale, which involved 326 acres of trees, resulted in a $1.9 million loss that contributed to Royal Hawaiian’s bigger net loss last year.

Shares in Royal Hawaiian slipped by 3 cents to $2.92 Tuesday on an over-the-counter stock exchange after the annual report was filed.