Birch sap can mean additional income for forest owners

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By Juhani Saarinen in Tohmajärvi, Eastern Finland
     
      Little wonder that Aila and Martti Kuronen’s neighbours have been scratching their heads over the strange sight.
      In a birch grove externding over a couple of hectares, there is a zigzag jumble of transparent plastic tubes. The tubes have been connected to the birch trunks, from which clear fluid - birch sap - is flowing out.
      Martti Kuronen eyes the birch grove with a satisfied expression on his face.
      “Just out of interest, I thought I would give it a try”, he says. “Even here in the sticks we can sometimes come up with something new and novel.”
     
Kuronen, who lives in Tohmajärvi in Northern Karelia, is collecting birch sap for the first time.
      He is taking part in a project organised by Central Karelia Development Company KETI Ltd, a business promotion and development company owned by the municipalities of Central Karelia, in which new sap collectors are sought for a Tohmajärvi company called Nordic Koivu.
      Dozens of landowners have expressed their interest in the project.
      “We have received phone calls from all over the country”, explains Susanna Maaranen, one of the two founders of Nordic Koivu.
      “Someone even asked if we were interested in buying sap from the five trees in their backyard.”
     
In the space of ten years, Nordic Koivu has become the world leader in birch sap production.
      Hundreds of thousands of litres of sap is expected to pass each year through the factory that was completed in the autumn of last year.
      The liquid is being sold as a drink and also as a raw material for the cosmetics industry. Especially in Central Europe, sap has market potential as a traditional health drink.
      In Finland the company’s organic sap has been sold since the turn of the year in the largest K-Group food stores.
      There are plenty of uses for sap: it can be turned into sparkling wine, for instance, or birch syrup.
      Managing Director Arto Maaranen hopes that birch sap would secure a status as raw material similar to that of the apparently ubiquitous aloe vera plant.
      ”Each year hundreds of millions, if not billions of litres of birch sap flows in Finland. This could become a huge business”, Maaranen says.
     
Until this spring, Nordic Koivu has collected its own sap. So far Martti Kuronen is the company’s only subcontractor, but a year from now there may be a dozen of them.
      Kuronen says that he has invested between EUR 10,000 and 20,000 in his collection equipment.
      If his calculations are correct, each spring the two-hectare birch grove should yield an income of around 10,000 euros.
      The paycheck does not come with a mere snap of the fingers, however. The setting up and cleaning of the collection tubes is a laborious exercise.
      “In the beginning normal working days were not enough”, Kuronen explains.
     
Sap is a fluid flowing in the trunk of a tree, transporting water and nutrients from the roots throughout the plant. In the spring the two-to-four-week sap season ends when the birches’ primary buds burst into leaf.
      Sap contains sugars, various acids, and minerals. The fluid has been used, for example, to medicate the symptoms of gout, to promote weight loss, and to inhibit birch pollen allergy symptoms in sufferers.
      Positive feedback has been received from the users, but the drink’s effectiveness has not been scientifically verified.
     
Sap can be collected from trees by drilling a hole of a few centimetres into the trunk. The hole is blocked up after the collection. The collected sap should be kept in a cold place and consumed within 24 hours, before it goes bad.
      Sap can also be deep frozen for later use.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 30.4.2011


Previously in HS International Edition:
  The birch sap is flowing again! (26.4.2005)

Links:
  Nordic Koivu
  Birch sap (Wikipedia)

JUHANI SAARINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
juhani.saarinen@hs.fi