The Pu'unene Mill was originally built in 1901 and has undergone numerous modernizations hidden behind its century-old facade. The mill grinding season is approximately 300 working days each year and the facility has a rated capacity to process 7,200 tons of cane each day. Because of this exhaustive schedule, a four- to six-week yearend period is used for equipment routine, maintenance, and mechanical repair or replacement.
When sugarcane arrives at the Puunene Mill following field harvesting, it is unloaded onto a series of conveyors where it is first washed to remove dirt and rocks. The cane then runs through a series of massive revolving cane knives to chop it into smaller lengths, before passing through a shredder to rupture the fiber cells and release the stored sugar juice.
A series of high pressure rollers extract the juice from the cane, sending the juice to the boiling house for processing and diverting the leftover fiber or bagasse to be used for fuel for the mill power plant.
The cane juice moves on through a series of processing steps that weigh and heat the juice, clarify and filter the juice to separate it from impurities, evaporate the clarified juice to create concentrated syrup, crystallize the sucrose in the syrup by heating under vacuum, and then separating the molasses from the raw sugar by centrifugal force.
(Right) The clarified juice is condensed to syrup, then sucrose is crystallized by heating under vacuum in these evaporators.
The majority of HC&S's raw sugar, processed here on Maui is transported to Crockett, California for final refining. The finished product is marketed in the Western two-thirds of the United States under the familiar C&H Cane Sugar label.
Our molasses is also sold on the Mainland except for a small amount that is sold directly to Hawaii's cattle feeders and dairies.
