Maple Supplies

[the old guy]

I Hope You Guys Have All The Maple Stuff You Need! I Sent An Order Totaling $342.50 Last Week With The Notation That These Prices Came From The 2007 Spring Catalog. That Order, Nothing Changed On It, Now Is Priced At $477.50! Pretty Hefty Increase. Freight Was Up Over 100%, Most Items Were Up 12 - 15%. You Might Want To Rethink Maple Syrup Prices.

The Old Guy

[VtSugarhouse]

Where did you purchase your items from?

[the old guy]

Michigan!

Old Guy

[Justin Turco]

Makes your head spin doesn't it!!?? I priced an RO the other day. Springtech 150, I think that was the model. Over $10,000. Small plastic parts are up bigtime.

[Bucket Head]

I was going to say just what you guy's are saying the other night after picking up some maple supplies!

I compared prices from last year's catalog to this year's and was sickened. Some prices increased well over twenty percent! It did'nt cost 20% more to make it! It is price gouging. If we jacked the price of a generator during a power outage, we would be brought up on charges.

I recently bought some stuff from a catolog, at their prices, and then was told of some website's that offered the same suff for less than half of what the maple dealer charged. I was plenty mad, but I will remember next time...

Are any of the manufacturer's wondering why the "used equipment" market is very strong, as well as the "do it yourself" crowd (I'm one) is making their equipment for a fraction of what their charging???

Are they trying to price the small producer out deliberately? Is it just greed alone?

Before you buy from a manufacturer, ask around and scour the internet, you can find a lot of what is offered at far less.

Signed;
Disgruntled Maple Producer

[sweetwoodmaple]

Understand your grief here, but oil and metals (new and scrap) are way up.

Plastic tubing, fittings, etc are made with oil and the evaporators...well you know the rest.

We all have jobs because of profit, but as you say, shop around. Deals to be had and competition is good and helps to drive the price down.

[DS Maple]

As much as I hate the rising costs of supplies, I will thank Bascom's for being honest. When I was last up there, which was at the beginning of January, the 2008 prices were a week away from going into effect, and they were nice enough to inform me to buy things that I would need later before I got stuck paying more for them. I haven't looked specifically, but I heard that some of the stuff in their catalog went up over 50% from last year. Supposedly a lot of the glass bottles and other packaging materials come over from Europe, so it's not only more expensive to produce them now, it is also more to ship them here.

[markcasper]

In 2000 the maple glass leaf bottles were introduced. At that time, I was told by a few dealers that they were manufactured in Italy.

Equipment is nuts, along with just about everything else that one needs to live. The fact is....food has been ultra cheap and underpriced for years. The Farm Bureau has did studies on this and was determined that Americans pay less for food per capita than any other nation on earth.

This may all come to a halt very soon as our dollar has become worth less and less due to the massive spiraling debt load that the US is carrying. The decreased US dollar makes agricultural commodities more attractive and worth more b/c of the other countries higher currency rates. It also creates mass inflation and thats what we are seeing today.
We are paying for our national debt in the form of lost jobs, mass layoffs, increased inflation and local units of goverment going broke due to lost tax revenue.

I don't have an answer to any of these things other than its time to tighten all of our belts.

I have noticed a trend among ALL packers of syrup-they are overly emphasizing increased taps/vacuum and production of syrup. They all have been touting increased $$$$$ as the reasons for doing it NOW. You never here much about the astounding price increases for equipment however.

If you really push the pencil, I think we are worse off economically to be in the syrup business than we were 10, even 5 years ago.

Example:1998: set of 4x12 leader drop-flue pans, 4ft. syrup, 8ft. flue= approx. $6,000

January 2008 price quote for above: $11,270= 87% increase

Example:1998 bulk drum syrup: Light Amber: $1.60/ lb.
Grade B: $1.15/lb

If bulk drum syrup prices have an 87% increase by this spring, then prices in May 2008 should be Light Amber:2.99/lb
Grade B : $2.15/lb

This should be the price recieved by all of us to equal parity with equipment. If I recall, I put rolls and rolls of Leader 30p in around 1999 and paid $32/roll. Now tubing is $55/ roll, while maybe not quite an 87% increase, it aint far behind. The most I have ever heard of a packer paying for LA this spring would be $2.25. Go figure!! Any wonder the rush to tap trees is on?? $2.25/lb to the packer is too much and they know it and are really scared about not having a market eventually.

There better be tons of oversees customers coming on line b/c some of the 74,000 General Motors workers that will soon be out of job will not pay $40-$50 a gallon for syrup.

[maple flats]

I agree that many components have skyrocketed but I feel there are some other things that raise our supplies prices. First, maple is basically a once a year boom business for the suppliers, sure they do a slow steady business for 9 months but then 3 months far exceed those 9. This raises prices because they have to make their profit in a shorter time. Another facter is the forcast of record high bulk prices, this is more like the cold rush syndrome. Everything surrounding the gold rush jumps sky high. I think some of these price raises are justified but I tend to think more of it is because much of what we use is only available from maple dealers, they have a monopoly of sorts. This is why when we find something used in maple production from a non maple source it is most often cheaper.

[DaveB]

It's the supply and demand process...

Demand is up for maple products (I'm told that there will be no surplus for this years crop!) and so to fill that demand people are producing more. As far as I know, maple equipment manufacturing capacity hasn't really gone up that much, so the market dictates that if you have the same amount of new equipment out there and more people want it, prices go up.

Add in the price of oil and transportation for raw and finished products, you have big jumps in the cost of everything.

Farm equipment products have gone sky high for the past couple of years and USED tractors and tilling equipment are actually selling for more than they cost when they were new!!

There are a lot of quality used maple products out there and if bulk prices keep going up, we might see increases there as well.