18511900: Early years Dole plc traces its origins to the foundation of
Castle & Cooke in 1851, and Charles McCann's Fish, Fruit and Vegetable Market in the 1850s in Ireland. Castle & Cooke, a sugar and logistics company, was founded in
Hawaii by
Amos Starr Cooke and
Samuel Northrup Castle.
19001969: Expansion and acquisition In 1899, industrialist
James Dole moved to Hawaii. James was the cousin of
Sanford B. Dole, who had helped
overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893, and became the governor of Hawaii in 1898. Two years after James Dole's arrival, he formed the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (HPC). The HPC delivered its first shipment of canned
pineapple in 1903. Early products of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company were not marketed under a particular brand name, often assuming the names of the distributors. In the early 20th century, pineapple was still relatively unknown, and James Dole and other growers mounted a marketing campaign in magazines in what the company now refers to as one of the first nationwide advertising campaigns in the United States. The company made technological advances in the early decades of the 20th century in processing the fruitmost notably the
Ginaca Machine, created in 1911that made canning pineapple commercially viable. In 1922, Dole purchased the Hawaiian island of
Lanai and turned it into the largest pineapple plantation in the world. The same year, Castle & Cooke acquired 33% of the company via lease agreement. In 1927, the HPC began stamping its cans with the Dole brand name, with numbers to indicate the
grade. These stamps ensured the Dole name would still be visible even if the label was changed by a distributor. By the end of the 1920s, the company grew more than 75% of all pineapples in the world. However, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company struggled to stay financially sound during the
Great Depression and Castle & Cooke took control of it in 1932. The HPC was renamed the "Dole Company" and became a subsidiary of Castle & Cooke in 1961. Two years later, the company began expanding its fruit growing operations into southeast Asia, opening plantations and canneries in
the Philippines and
Thailand. The firm grew rapidly in its early years, establishing a headquarters in
La Ceiba,
Honduras, purchasing housing and cargo ships, and building rail and telephone lines at its plantations. The company's rapid growth has been attributed to the destruction of property records in the early 20th century, leading the firm to take control of large swaths of land with the support of the Honduran government. In 1924, the firm went public as the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company. In the 1920s, as
Panama disease was destroying crops of the
Gros Michel banana, Standard Fruit began looking for other cultivars to grow, settling on the
Cavendish banana. Switching to the Cavendish allowed Standard Fruit to become the largest banana producer in the world by the 1960s. Standard Fruit merged with Castle & Cooke in 1968. While these companies were forming in the United States, the McCanns expanded their operations in Ireland, opening a store in
Dundalk in 1902. In the 1950s, the McCanns began consolidating with other companies in Ireland, creating United Fruit Importers and then Fruit Importers of Ireland, which became a publicly traded company.
19702000: Expansions, selloffs, and splits Ten years after its merger with Standard Fruit, Castle & Cooke acquired Bud Antle Inc., a
California-based vegetable company. However, Castle & Cooke began to struggle financially and was purchased in 1985 by billionaire
David H. Murdock. After the purchase, Dole began expanding its offerings by purchasing other food companies, buying several
West Coast fruit and nut producers and distributors between 1985 and 1990, including Bonner Packing Company in California and Wells and Wade Fruit Company in
Washington. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Fruit Importers of Ireland purchased
Fyffes from
Chiquita in 1986. Murdock separated Dole and Castle & Cooke in 1996, turning the latter into a
real estate development company.
2000present: Recovery and merger with Total Produce In the early 2000s, Dole struggled financially and was nearly bankrupt. Murdock rescued the company, which had been publicly traded, and took it private in 2003. In 2007, a California judge awarded $2.3 million to Nicaraguan banana workers who sued Dole for its DBCP use. However, the ruling was overturned in 2010, with another judge noting a lack of evidence connecting the workers to Dole plantations and fraud committed by the plaintiffs' lawyers. Swedish filmmaker
Fredrik Gertten made a documentary about the latter lawsuit, entitled
Bananas!*, which led to a
defamation lawsuit by Dole. Dole lost the suit and was ordered to pay the filmmakers
SEK 1,400,000. Gertten made a follow-up
documentary about the defamation suit that premiered in 2012, entitled
Big Boys Gone Bananas!*. Total Produce was spun off from Fyffes in 2006 as a fresh fruit and vegetable business separate from the tropical fruits business of Fyffes. In 2007, Total Produce expanded further into the
United Kingdom, purchasing British firm Redbridge Holdings for £11.75 million. In 2009, Dole was sued by families of banana workers in
Colombia, who alleged that the company had bankrolled militias that killed thousands of Colombians, including
trade union organizers. The suit was
dismissed with prejudice the following year. Murdock took Dole public again in 2009, raising $446 million in the process. In 2012, Dole reached a deal to sell its packaged food division and Asian fresh produce operations to the Japanese firm
Itochu for $1.7 billion, with the purchase concluding in April 2013. As part of the Itochu deal, the Dole brand continued to be used for some packaged food products worldwide and fresh produce in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, although the Dole Food Company had no business involvement for these products. He and Dole Food Company President Michael Carter were later sued by investors for undervaluing the company during the Itochu deal, and in 2015, a judge in
Delaware ordered the pair to pay shareholders $148 million for intentionally lowering the value of Dole stock prior to the buyout. Total Produce purchased a 45% stake in the Dole Food Company in 2018, and merged with Dole in 2021 to form Dole plc. Dole plc () began trading on the
New York Stock Exchange in July 2021. ==Operations==