The Industry of Oil

For 20 years, Oils of Aloha has manufactured pure kukui and macadamia oils and innovative skin and haircare products

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ALOHA OIL: Gody Soriano and Barbara Gray work the oil press.

­­­Oils of Aloha's pure and vitamin-fortified product.

What’s red, white and blue, larger than an elephant and smells like macadamia nuts? The answer is a custom-made macadamia oil press, which for Oils of Aloha generates not only oil but also revenue. For Matthew Papania, president of the Waialua company and the one who pieced the system together from second-hand equipment, the noisy machine is also a work in progress.

“Nothing is new, just how it is set up,” Papania says. For example, the main part of the machine – which happens to be blue and was originally used in the South to press peanuts – was painstakingly modified for the size and texture of macadamias.

Much has changed since Dana Gray and his wife, Barbara, bought the company out of bankruptcy in 1988. The company was making mostly kukui leis and jewelry. Back then, people knew a lot about the kukui nut but not much about the oil. The same goes for macadamia oil. That’s no longer the case. Last year Oils of Aloha saw $2.7 million in gross sales and this year is projecting $3 million.

Although its headquarters in Waialua is easy to miss, Oils of Aloha is Hawaii’s largest producer of kukui- and macadamia-oil products, and its clients include international cosmetic giants, whose names Oils of Aloha officials couldn’t disclose due to confidentiality agreements.

The company uses a special, natural oil-extracting process and then infuses both kinds of oil with antioxidants (Vitamins A, C and E for kukui and Vitamin E for macadamia). The company has done extensive testing on the purity and scientific properties of its oils, making them ideal for pharmaceutical and cosmetic uses. Besides bulk kukui and macadamia oil, Oils of Aloha manufactures a line of kukui skin and haircare products, including moisturizing cream and lotion, soaps and shampoo, macadamia cooking oils and an after-sun treatment that incorporates both oils.

How does one grow a business – not just any business but a Hawaii-based manufacturer that was running in the red – into one with multimillion dollar sales? Dana Gray, who retired last year, says a lot of his company’s success is luck. But there’s much more to the story if you press on.

Gray had just retired as a manager of Liberty House downtown when an attorney friend told him about “this interesting little kukui nut company on the North Shore.” He checked it out, and, undeterred by the company’s financial problems, he was intrigued by the idea of selling kukui oil. He learned that people claimed the oil had curative powers.

“I thought it would be fun to try to sell ‘snake oil,’” he says. Soon after he bought the company, Gray met a Japanese businessman who asked if he could make macadamia oil. He found he could, and Oils of Aloha doubled its oil inventory.

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