Quebec police are on the hunt for a thief after $30 million of maple syrup vanished from a Quebec warehouse.
The heist was first uncovered during a routine inventory check last week at the St-Louis-de-Blandford warehouse. It was revealed that about 10 million pounds of syrup was stored at the site, valued at approximately $30 million.
Initially, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, which is responsible for the global strategic maple syrup reserve, kept the news quiet, but it appears investigators are truly stuck with the case, and the Federation had no choice but to release the news to the public.
All of the maple syrup inventories are fully insured, so the Federation is primarily concerned that all the extra syrup will flood the market.
“Obviously those people stole the maple syrup to sell it somewhere,” said Anne-Marie Granger Godbout, executive director of the federation. “If it’s a big volume, it could be very harmful for the maple syrup industry. The companies that are working in this industry will have to compete with some company that didn’t pay for the maple syrup.”
Quebec produces between 70 and 80 per cent of the world’s maple syrup, with the bulk of export sales taking place in the United States, according to the federation.
