The California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C &H) refinery, founded in 1906 at Crockett, California, refined Hawaii-grown sugar until 2017, the year it refined Maui’s Hawaiian Commercial &Sugar Co.’s final shipment of raw sugar.
Until C &H was established, Hawaiian sugar plantations sold raw sugar to a limited number of mainland refining companies on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts that also marketed their sugar.
It was because the Hawaiian sugar industry required its very own refining and marketing organization that C &H came into being.
Raw Hawaiian sugar was shipped by freighter from Hawaiian ports to the C &H refinery in California.
The raw sugar received at the C &H refinery contained about 2 1/7 percent impurities that needed to be removed in order to make refined granulated sugar.
Raw sugar was first washed with water to remove an exterior film of molasses.
It was then dissolved to form an amber-colored syrup, which was then passed through filters to remove undissolved impurities.
The filtered syrup was then filtered once again through bone char, a granular material produced by charring cattle bones.
Bone char would absorb color, dissolve other impurities, and transform it into a clear liquid, which was then boiled under vacuum to form crystalline sugar.
The crystalline sugar was thereafter washed, dried, screened, packaged and marketed by C &H as granulated sugar.
C &H also refined sugar for Hawaiian consumption at Aiea, Oahu, which it acquired from the Honolulu Plantation Co. in 1947.
On Kauai, for many years, raw sugar was shipped off-island in bags, a costly process.
Then in 1950, the Nawiliwili Bulk Sugar Plant was built for the purpose of storing raw sugar in bulk prior to shipment.
Raw sugar was thereafter hauled by truck from various Kauai sugar plantations to the bulk sugar plant.
It was then loaded aboard a freighter moored at the Nawiliwili dock by means of a covered conveyor that transferred sugar from the bulk sugar warehouse to the dock, where it was poured into the hold of the freighter for shipment.