ISLAND POND – An outsider would likely say Joe Russo, chief operating officer at Sweet Tree Holdings in Island Pond, is in charge of the maple company. Others might say it’s the Montreal investment banking firm that owns the business and is heavily involved.
But Russo would say it’s the sap, which at this time of year can stay in the tree or flood the taps, precipitating quick action in the boiling room. Russo, who has been tapping trees and making syrup since ninth grade, said the maple run dictates what happens at Sweet Tree, Vermont’s largest maple sugar operation. At this time of year, the pattern of freezing nights and moderate daytime temperatures needed for the sap to flow sets schedules, workloads and paydays.
“The employees understand it’s not me; we have to do what the maple asks us to do,” said Russo as the company prepared to fire up the evaporators on a recent mid-season day. “We really have no control over any of it: The timing, the schedule… people will be working now on call, which is difficult for everyone.”
The maple industry, always a mainstay for Vermont farmers, is big business in Vermont, with large newcomers like Sweet Tree growing in response to demand from consumers for natural sweeteners.
It doesn’t get much more natural than maple syrup, which starts as sap that flows straight from trees into tubing and containers to be boiled down. The industry now produces maple-flavored candies, vinegars, drinks and other food items.
Sweet Tree, which makes maple products for many national labels and produces its own line called Maple Guild, started up six years ago in a vacant 84,000-square-foot Ethan Allen plant in Island Pond, a small Northeast Kingdom town where good jobs are scarce. The owner is Fiera Comox, an investment banking firm in Montreal that focuses on agriculture and private equity.
Fiera Comox bought the company a year ago from a branch of the insurance giant MassMutual, and it employs a team of remote marketing people who come up with ideas about what will sell. Russo, a trained chef who worked on Holland America cruise ships for 30 years, cooks up the recipes in the office kitchen and then has the products mass-produced on the factory floor.
“I get a call from sales and marketing and someone wants a coffee-flavored maple syrup, or would you make a spring berry syrup,” Russo said. “There’s a lot of testing here. We’ll make anything anybody wants.”
Russo, a New Jersey native, started out sugaring at his parents’ place in the Catskills when he was a child, taking time off from school every spring to tap trees and boil the sap with a neighbor who was a veteran sugarmaker. He later purchased a large sugarbush in Belvedere and left his cruise ship career for sugaring season. When he needs technical assistance, he uses the services of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill or Cornell University’s maple research and extension program.
He explained his passion for the business as a calling.
“I could not think of doing anything else,” he said.
The maple business is heavily subject to weather conditions. In 2017, Vermont saw its second-highest maple production ever. The following year, weather suppressed production by 3 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA estimated the number of taps in Vermont at 13.7 million last year, up 3 percent from the 2017 total.
Total employment at Sweet Tree is about 100. Sweet Tree invests a lot of time, staff and money in the forest. The company owns thousands of acres of land where 60 to 70 people work year-round maintaining the trees and equipment.
“When we buy (land), we have full control and there’s not a third party involved,” Russo said. “Probably on the long-term, it’s less expensive for us. It’s just easier to operate if we own it.”
The sap is trucked back to the factory in Island Pond, where it is reduced by reverse osmosis and heating.
Sweet Tree plans to grow. Under its old owners, the company first purchased 7,000 acres in Avery’s Gore and Warren’s Gore and put in 160,000 taps. It later leased Russo’s land in Belvedere as well as land in Ferdinand and Westmore. The company recently bought a couple of thousand acres in Plainfield where it hasn’t started tapping trees yet, and is closing soon on another piece of land near Russo’s Belvedere property, Russo said.
With 460,000 taps, Sweet Tree is the largest maple producer in Vermont by a long shot, said Amanda Voyer, executive director of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association.
“Once you hit 30,000 taps, we consider that really large,” said Voyer.
But 30,000 might become the norm. Voyer said the industry has doubled nationwide in the last decade. A decade ago, a very large Vermont producer was one with 5,000 or 10,000 taps. Now, the state has a half dozen other large producers, like Green Mountain Mainlines in Fletcher, Runamok Maple in Fairfax, Georgia Mountain Maples in Milton, and Goodrich’s Maple Farm in Cabot, which has more than 100,000 taps and 22 full-time employees. Vermont is the largest maple producer in the U.S., although Quebec puts out four or five times as much maple syrup as Vermont each year.
The Quebec industry is growing, too.
“The chief competition is Canadian syrup that comes south of the border and gives us a run for our money,” said Ruth Goodrich, who co-owns Goodrich’s. “Those big packers pack more syrup than what Vermont could ever produce. They buy it by the tanker truck. It’s quite a whole ‘nother world out there when it comes to bulk syrup.”
Voyer said the market is expanding to accommodate increased production.
“There is money to be had,” she said. “We’re fortunate that maple is only produced in a small region of the world, so the market potential is huge, especially in terms of exports.”
Sweet Tree won’t make as much syrup this year as it could sell, Voyer said.
“We are already dealing with syrup shortages coming up soon; that’s how much we are selling,” he said. “There are tractor-trailer loads going out of here every day.”
Russo is sensitive to the fact that Vermonters don’t always like to see their cherished agricultural traditions reproduced at an industrial scale. He declined to say how much money the company is making or has spent on its operation.
“All I can tell those folks is one thing: Come and speak to our employees,” he said. There’s a thick stack of job applications at the office door.
Russo’s own emotional ties to maple sugaring are decades-old. He said he wouldn’t work for a large maple company unless its leaders were informed and involved.
“The organization is so complex and it requires expertise in so many fields,” he said of Fiera Comox. “I believe the owners understand it and respect it.”
