The Headline Said It All: “PINEAPPLE PAU.”

We took an economic body blow the other day. Maui Land and Pine, the last company growing pineapple on this island, is shutting down. It’s been coming. We’ve all known that. But it was a shock nevertheless.

The company had been scaling back for several years and, by the end of the year, the last 285 pineapple workers will be pau (finished), too.

It’s easy to shrug and say this is just a sign of the times: lousy economy, high cost of labor, prohibitive cost of shipping the fresh fruit to the U.S. mainland, etcetera and so forth. Certainly those are all factors.

But many people, including those who know and understand the business, say there were also bad — no, make that, terrible — management decisions that were a major cause of the company’s demise.

One former ML&P president was sacked a year ago, but not before he bought a prime piece of property from the company (they say at market price) on which he built a luxury home.

The workers, however, remain screwed.