It may not be the biggest maple syrup heist the province has ever seen, but Quebec police are investigating after a group of thieves made off with 20,000 litres of the sweet stuff early last week.
Thieves broke into a Mexcuscan Cargo warehouse in Dorval, near Montreal’s Trudeau airport, late last Sunday. They used a transport to steal a shipping container filled with 20 pallets of one-litre maple syrup bottles. Often known as “liquid gold,” the Kirkland-brand syrup is worth an estimated $150,000.
Thefts like these might be rare, but they’re not unheard of—especially in the province of Quebec, which produces more than 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup supply.
In 2009, thieves broke into a sugar shack in Quebec’s Eastern Townships and made off with eight barrels of maple syrup, worth at least $16,000. Between August 2011 and July 2012, thieves managed to steal 9,600 barrels of maple syrup, worth an estimated $18 million, from a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec.
Mexcuscan Cargo’s vice president, Alfredo Monaco, told CBC News that the recent theft has had a big impact on the company’s bottom line because their trucking insurance won’t cover all of the revenue they’ve lost. They’re offering a $10,000 reward for any information that helps recover the syrup, which Monaco believes will still be with the thieves.
He thinks they’ll have a tough time unloading all that syrup because Kirkland is Costco’s house brand, so it won’t be too tough to identify the stolen goods. And even if you drink the stuff for breakfast—that’s a lot of syrup for one family!
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