Made in Hawaii: Chamber, officials stress importance of manufacturing during tour

“It’s a little bit noisy here,” HPM Building Supply president and CEO Michael Fuijimoto told a group of local business officials and chamber of commerce members on Friday, shortly before he walked into a large workroom at the HPM work facility in Keaau’s W.H. Shipman Business Park. Outside the room, saws whined and whirred. Inside, booming crunches signaled the creation of a new piece of corrugated metal roofing.

HPM was the first stop on the first-ever National Manufacturing Day tour of Hilo, sponsored by the Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce and the statewide body, as well as the Innovate Hawaii Program.

Hawaii’s manufacturing industry tends to sit in the shadow of its tourism economy, something the state chamber of commerce is hoping to change with more promotion and outreach.

“This is really exciting for us,” president and CEO Sherry Menor-McNamara told the group.

Similar tours featuring local manufacturers took place on Kauai, Maui and Oahu last week.

Menor-McNamara said the goal is to show what manufacturing does for local economies and communities.

“We’re making products in Hawaii for Hawaii, and products in Hawaii for export,” she said. That way, she said, Hawaii’s recognizable brand can be promoted around the world.

During the Hilo tour, focus remained on local impact. In addition to the HPM facility, attendees toured Pacific Biodiesel, the Mehana Brewing Company, and the Meadow Gold Dairies processing plant, where KTA’s Mountain Apple brand milk and juice is also processed.

At each location, emphasis was on maintaining top quality in the products, whether roof trusses, biofuel, or Southern Cross ale. Computer programs helped employees at HPM create models of homes and direct the whirring saws to make accurate cuts. A massive distillation system at Pacific Biodiesel allowed for more flexibility in creating fuel.

Biodiesel is created by taking waste oils — either animal or vegetable — and breaking them down into their basic components. Once refined and purified, these can be used to power any sort of machine that uses diesel fuel.

The Honolulu County transportation system is entirely powered by B20 fuels, a mix that is 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent regular diesel. Hawaii County is working to make the transition in its own transit vehicles.

As with HPM, which was cofounded by Michael Fujimoto’s father, Pacific Biodiesel is a family business.

The Big Island’s operations manager Jenna Long is the daughter of company founders Bob and Kelly King of Maui.

Mehana Brewing is also part of a long legacy: its brewing site in Hilo was the former site of a soda processing plant. In the 1990s, the grandson of the original owners decided to open a brewery instead.

That later became part of Hawaii Nui Brewery, which is now owned by Paul DeMare of Honolulu.

Meadow Gold’s Hilo plant opened around the time Mehana Brewing did, in 1994, as a means of supporting the local economy after the sugar plantations went out of business. It has been working for years to provide local milk and milk products even as the cost of providing feed for dairy cows — which is imported from the mainland — has increased. At one point, there were five dairy producers on the island, but now there are just two.

For any manufacturing business, adaptation to changing economic climates is the key to staying afloat.

Hawaii’s local businesses will get more support from the state in the coming years, though. During the last legislative session, a statewide manufacturing development program was established after Gov. David Ige signed SB 1001.

The bill provides $2 million to High Tech Development Corporation, a tech and business incubator based on Oahu, for disbursement as grants to manufacturers.

Menor-McNamara said that the recent increased effort was the answer to a simple question.

“What industries can we support and help grow?”

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.