Page 313 - BWA FEB 2013
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February 2013
| Business World Magazine | 313
so high as to shiver the timbers of any sailor.
Robert had designed the fueling ship, formu-
lated the plan and gained some traction, but
alas, this concept too drowned in the water.
And it wasn’t as if the Kings weren’t
already successful. They had what Kelly de-
scribes as “a working business” in a genera-
tor dealership that was doing very well. Rob-
ert was already kept sufficiently busy having
been contracted to service andmaintain gen-
erators throughout the community. So, with
respect to the new idea, no one could blame
Kelly for asking her husband, “Why now?”
Robert made his convincing case, a case that
encompassed not only cost and supply issues
relative to the use of petroleum products, but
also environmental concerns arising from the
discarded deluge of used cooking oils that
were mucking-up area landfills. Robert’s pro-
posal was to devise a method for capturing
and refining that material to create biodiesel.
“Bio-what?” was Kelly’s initial response.
INDUSTRY PIONEER
It took only a year following that conversa-
tion, and in 1996 the Kings processed their
first biodiesel and establishedPacific Biodies-
el. Now headquartered in Kahului, Hawaii,
