Is Spruce Sap Really Worth $500 Per Pound?

Lately, there has been a lot of loud talk across the internet claiming that raw spruce sap is one of the rarest, most expensive ingredients on Earth. Viral videos from companies pushing  products look straight at the camera and claim this sticky stuff is worth $500 a pound!

Simply put, that is an absolute marketing gimmick.

Before I ever made a single commercial tin of chewing gum, I spent years harvesting, grading, and selling raw spruce resin globally. I know the global resin market inside and out because I have been deep in it for a very long time. Let me give you the unglamorous truth: a pound of quality, clean, raw Canadian spruce resin typically brings $50 to $80 per pound on the raw market. Some areas some harvesters can get even 80 to 160 per pound.  That is for the raw material straight off the tree. Not five hundred dollars.

But do you know what a pound of sap looks like? I do. Iv sold thousands of pounds of it. One pound fits neatly inside my scale tray. It's not very much material at all. And when you proccess it for gum, you loose over 50% material.  

With the sudden explosion of interest in traditional spruce gum, a few newer brands are trying to gentrify the Boreal forest. They want you to believe that spruce resin is some mythical, golden material that is nearly impossible to obtain and worth a fortune before anyone even touches it. 

I don't think that paints an honest picture. In fact, it infuriates me.

Let’s talk about clarified resin. That is a completely different product.

Clarified resin has been meticulously hand-harvested, cleaned of heavy bark, sorted by quality, melted down with precise temperature controls, triple-filtered, and refined into a pure, chewable form. The manual labor and specialized knowledge required to do this right are massive. Naturally, a finished, purified product commands a higher value.

For perspective, if I math out the weight of my own finished chewing gum by the pound based on my current retail pricing, it works out to roughly $465 per pound of finished, pure gum.

But notice the massive difference in these two statements:

Those are two completely different realities. Pretending the raw dirt-and-bark-covered sap in the woods is inherently worth $500 is a deliberate trick to hide tiny product volumes.  They have to claim the raw material is liquid gold to stop you from feeling shortchanged when you open the lid.

So why is real spruce gum expensive? Honestly?

Because ypu have to work really damn hard to get it and turn it into gum. And it doesn't stop there. You couod search 5 forests and find no sap to harvest , until you find that one area and suddenly you have an abundance.  Trees does not equal sap. Not all forests produce usable sap. Not all locations are ideal. That's where our expertise comes in. 

There are long drives through the Alberta wilderness, exhausting hikes, scouting entirely new territories, collecting sticky resin by hand in sub-zero or mosquito-heavy weather, cleaning it, clarifying it, cooking it, testing the chew, cutting it, packaging it, and standing behind the finished product. That physical grind and years of experience have real value.

But is a small, everyday tin of spruce gum worth fifty or sixty dollars before shipping?

Personally, I don't think so. And that is coming from a wildcrafter who does the physical work for every single batch that leaves our home. I refuse to believe traditional spruce gum should ever be treated like a status symbol.

That is why my tins are $42 CAD, and we intentionally pack them with more total grams (35g) and my starter packs which are 15 grams and only 22 CAD  than any other company on the market. We do that by design.

I price my gum based on what is fair for my family for the actual physical labor involved—not on artificial internet hype. As spruce gum continues to trend, the temptation within the industry is to keep squeezing consumers and pushing prices higher simply because a viral algorithm allows it.

At Alberta Wildcraft, I’d rather play a fair game.

I want a regular outdoor enthusiast, a history buff, or a curious hunter, or regular city folk, to experience real, wildcrafted spruce gum without feeling like they are buying a high-end luxury cosmetic. Spruce gum is historically a rugged, grounding, subsistence bushcraft treat. Loggers, trappers, and Indigenous communities popped it straight off the tree for generations because it was a functional gift from the forest. It belongs to the people who love the woods. But not everybody wants to chew raw sap. So that's why we exist.

The forest gives us something remarkable, and abundant. My job is to turn it into something honest, handcrafted, and fairly priced.

The forest is honest. I think the people who harvest from it should be too.

If you're curious about what traditionally made, honest small-batch Canadian spruce gum actually looks like, you can explore our collection here.

 Shop Canadian Spruce Gum

 

Mastering Spruce Resin

Unlike companies that hide their process to protect their "luxury" narrative, we believe this traditional knowledge should be open to everyone. Explore our complete guide for all things spruce!

Start Here

1. What Is Spruce Resin? A Beginner’s Guide
2. How to Identify Spruce and Pine Trees for Resin Harvesting
3. How to Find Resin in the Forest – Training the Resin Eye
4. How to Harvest and Filter Resin Pitch

Chewing Spruce Gum

5. How to Chew Spruce Gum – Complete Beginner’s Guide
6. Common Mistakes and Questions When Chewing Spruce Gum
7. Mastic Gum vs Spruce Gum
8. Why Spruce & Pine Resin Gum Is Making a Comeback

Traditional Uses of Spruce Resin

9. Medicinal Uses of Spruce and Pine Resin
10. Using Pine or Spruce Pitch for Waterproofing

Forest Recipes

11. Spruce, Pine and Fir Resin – Recipe Included
12. Wildcrafted Pine Pop – Make Natural Forest Soda
13. Spruce Herbal Tea

14. How to make Spruce Resin Soap