Selling concentrated sap

[woodchuck]

Hey:
Im at a point in life where the kids are through college and I’m doing a few “me” things. My five year plan is to have a small 800 tap sugaring operation. My first step has been to develop a bush and build a sugarhouse (no pan). This year I got up to 200 trees on vacuum (400 next year) and 100 buckets and drive my sap 25 miles to a family members sugarhouse. Driving 350 gallons of sap on a good day takes time and wear and tear on my truck and trailer.
Im a one man show so an RO is in my plan. SO, what if i get it a few years earlier than I planned. How much can I sell 8-10% concentrate for?
Im just thinking out loud and looking for your thoughts.
Thanks for listening :)

[jmayerl]

Concentrate only has a shelf life of up too 4 hours on a good cold day with fresh sap being concentrated. It isn't really feasible to sell concentrate unless the buyer is very close and they are ready to cook it immediately

[southfork]

With the cost associated with setting up a modern processing plant, I believe selling concentrate will be a very real part of the industry future. Many are transporting concentrate now. Right from the R/O into transporting tanks with immediate delivery to area processors, pretty simple process. Not sure on price, variable by area and demand I suspect.

[spud]

I plan to sell concentrate in the next year or two. We have not discussed price yet but my buyer is willing to pay more. Right now selling sap I get $20.50 per gallon of syrup and that is 65% of bulk price. If I sold 10% sap it would take 8.7 gallons to make a gallon of syrup. I would need five times the money just to break even. To make it worth my while to even buy an RO I would need about 5-7 times as much money as I'm getting now for a gallon of 10% sap sold. That would put the price of 10% quality sap at $2.50 a gallon. just to break even. Then I have to factor in the cost of an RO and the electric bill. If your also driving the sap to the buyer then it goes up more.

Spud