Questions About Selling Sap

I plan on selling sap from a Northeast Kingdom farm we recently bought. I'm new to this business and have the following questions.

1. How does the price of bulk sap get set?

2. Who sets the price?

3. Is there an area price or do individual sap buyers set their own price?

4. Does the price vary during the sugaring season?

5. What is the spread between sap bought at the sugar bush and sap delivered to the buyer?

6. How many gallons of sap should I get from each tap?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

While prices vary widely, from buyer to buyer, sap is priced by the buyer most often. I am only familiar with my pricing. I only buy sap brought to the sugarhouse and I use the suggested pricing from the "Maple Journal". Each year, before the season they publish a recommended price chart, based on a 50/50 split. It varies by sap sugar %, the higher the sugar, the higher the price. A typical average is 2% but that varies widely dependant on the trees. A nicely thinned bush gives better % that one with crowded trees. Even after thinning, it takes time for the crowns to fill in. The better the crown the higher the sugar%. For sap, if using buckets a good average might be 15-20 gal sap/season, tubing on medium vacuum about the same and tubing on high vacuum might get 25-30 gal/season in an average season. Tubing on gravity gets considerably less. There is a new method on gravity that gets good results, if you have good elevation drops (slope) you can use 3/16" tubing and get good natural vacuum. For that read up on 3/16" tubing design methods.
In my case, the price only varies by the sugar %.
If you are looking at a large volume of sap, some larger producers might pick up, but the price will be considerably lower.
Last season, 2% sap was about $.36/gal. The sap must be clean, clear, fresh and must taste and smell good.

The larger producers in Vermont are paying as much as 62% of the bulk syrup value. Not sure how they are doing the calculation with regards to the varying sugar content and/or syrup grades. If you go to the Cornell website you can find a spread sheet that Mike Farrel developed for this purpose. If you want to keep it simple do what Flats suggests and use the price list published each spring in the Maple Digest. Good luck.

ohio maple producers association has this

http://www.ohiomaple.org/sap-app.html

I paid based on same chart as Maple Flats delivered to sugarhouse. Always looking for more sap

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Originally Posted by FinallyGreen

I plan on selling sap from a Northeast Kingdom farm we recently bought. I'm new to this business and have the following questions.

1. How does the price of bulk sap get set? (It gets set by the price of bulk syrup).

2. Who sets the price? ( The price of syrup is set mainly by Canada and the price of sap is set by the sap buyer).

3. Is there an area price or do individual sap buyers set their own price? ( In general the price of sap is higher in Northern Vermont and is about 60-70% of bulk price. Anywhere else it is around 50% because their is less buyers in the area. If there is only one buyer in your area you can bet your going to get screwed.)

4. Does the price vary during the sugaring season? ( Yes it does. The price is based on the grade of syrup your sap is making. Early and mid season sap pays the most and then late season sap pays less. On average you can expect .30-.50cents per gallon for the season.)

5. What is the spread between sap bought at the sugar bush and sap delivered to the buyer? ( About 5-10% in my area.)

6. How many gallons of sap should I get from each tap? ( With a good set-up and high vacuum you should get between 20-30 GPT. Tree size will have a lot to do with this. Sugar content will also be a big factor with tree size. I average 1.7% when others will get 2.5 or better.)

Thanks in advance for any answers.

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(your welcome)

Spud

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Originally Posted by spud

(your welcome)

Spud

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The King has spoken

Hey if you can get a buyer like spud has you are set!

I have not heard of anyone in the north east kingdom paying what Spud is getting.

Finally green- I think youll just have to go around to the local producers close to you and see what they are willing to pay. If there is a couple they might want to compete to get your sap especially if you do quite a bit of volume. Hopefully it will work out for you but if nobody wants to buy the sap theres nothing you can do about that. If that turns out to be the case youll just have to modify your plan and gear up to process it yourself if you still want to do it. Just have to see whats available in your area. Youll have to get a feel also if you can trust them to really buy all your sap if your going to put in a lot of taps because you don't want to spend all that money running tube, get thousands of gallons of sap and then have no place to go with it. Youll just have to look and ask around and feel things out.