Dole plc

What does Dole plc own?
Dole plc owns the Dole brand for fresh produce across most global markets, plus farms, packing facilities, ripening centers, and shipping assets across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

Is Dole plc publicly traded?
Yes. Dole plc trades on the NYSE under the ticker DOLE since the 2021 merger that created the current company.

Who founded Dole plc?
The current company formed in 2021 from the merger of Total Produce and Dole Food Company. Dole Food's lineage reaches back to James Dole's 1901 Hawaiian Pineapple Company within Castle & Cooke, founded 1851.

Where is Dole plc headquartered?
Dole plc is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with a major US executive office in Charlotte, North Carolina.

How many brands does Dole plc own?
Its principal brand is Dole, applied across fresh fruit, salads, and packaged fresh products, supplemented by regional labels.

Who owns Dole plc?
Public shareholders through the NYSE listing, with the McCann family's legacy investment entities holding the largest single bloc.

The corporate lineage runs through two long histories. On the American side, Castle & Cooke, founded in 1851, acquired James Dole's Hawaiian Pineapple Company and built Dole Food into the world's largest fruit company through the twentieth century. On the Irish side, the McCann family's fruit distribution business evolved through Fyffes and Total Produce into Europe's largest fresh produce distributor.

Dole Food's modern era included a 2003 management buyout by David Murdock, a 2009 IPO, a 2013 return to private ownership, and the 2013 sale of its Asian fresh produce and packaged foods businesses to ITOCHU, which created Dole Asia Holdings and split brand rights by geography.

Total Produce, itself spun out of Fyffes in 2007, bought a 45% stake in Dole Food in 2018, then merged fully with it in July 2021. The combined company, named Dole plc, listed on the NYSE under DOLE, with Total Produce's Carl McCann as executive chairman and the McCann family entities retaining a meaningful stake.

Post-merger strategy has focused on portfolio optimization: divesting the Fresh Vegetables division in 2023, selling its stake in the Ecuador port operations in 2026, and concentrating on the core banana, pineapple, and diversified fresh produce segments. Fiscal 2025 delivered revenue of $9.17 billion, up 8.2%, with adjusted EBITDA of $395.4 million.

Dole publishes annual sustainability reporting and has committed to science-based emissions targets, with programs covering regenerative agriculture trials, water management, and packaging reduction. The company reports Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in line with its public-company obligations.

The company's labor record includes the historic legacy of pesticide litigation tied to DBCP use on Central American banana farms in the 1970s and 1980s, cases that produced decades of litigation, most resolved or dismissed by the 2010s. Modern labor programs are documented through supplier codes and certification schemes.

Dole's most significant historic controversy is the DBCP pesticide litigation, in which thousands of Central American plantation workers alleged sterility from chemical exposure. US courts ultimately dismissed most claims, and several high-profile verdicts were overturned on fraud findings.

More recent scrutiny has focused on banana disease management, including TR4 (Panama disease) containment across producing regions, and on packaging waste commitments criticized by environmental groups as trailing European peers. The company has also disclosed cybersecurity incidents affecting operations in past years.