Thanks, everyone, for giving us a chance to be heard today. It's very important to us.
While we have the chance to be in front of you, I will take a minute and a half to introduce us. You have the documentation.
We are a maple syrup cooperative. We belong to 2,000 families. Beyond that, we are a honey co-op and a cranberry co-op as well. We are dedicated to producing 100% pure products. This is very important, and we will talk about the quality of the product out there. We are dedicated to 100% pure products. We do not sell mixed products.
We do $90 million in sales, with 95% of that exported to more than 40 countries and five continents. We've been operating since 1925. It has been quite a long time. There are 350 employees and 2,000 families. There are 2,000 families in the maple industry. Like I said, there are families in the honey business as well, and there are families in the cranberry business.
You will find that a heart is shown on this next page of our presentation, following the three types of production. It's very significant to us and is our brand new signature, because the heart is the passion of our producers. It's the values when we trade. It's the values in the way we behave with our human resources.
In a trade show, everyone in the business sells or shows a product. We show who we are. That's our way of doing business. We've won in “Trends & Innovations” at SIAL in Toronto. We've been named Canadian exporter of the year. We've won the Canada brand award. We've won many awards from the International Maple Syrup Institute.
I've nearly finished going over what we do. We have our own stores, the Canadian Maple Delights stores, where we have a lot of different products. We do our own desserts. We create new packaging and innovation. This is why we say that we're producers of pure innovations.
Also, like I said, we are in the cranberry and the honey business, so I will cover the importance of this agreement between Europe and Canada by talking about more than one product. I will flip over to maple and then to cranberry, because it's the same reality.
The importance of the maple sector in 2009 was 13,000 jobs and almost $800 million in assets. In 2012, we were exporting almost $250 million.
Most important, this next slide shows that among the exports of maple syrup, 20% of the exports are represented by the European market already. If we take out the U.S. sales, close to 60% of the sales of maple syrup are in the European market.
This agreement is very important to us, because today we have—unless you give me a great announcement that the fees for selling in Europe are no longer there—fees of 8% for maple and 17.6% for cranberries. It's very important, because there is the U.S., and we call that the U.S. nightmare. I'll explain that to you. In the cranberry industry, there are U.S. businesses that open factories or sell their product through Chile. That has no fees. It does not create a lot of jobs in Canada.
If we let the U.S. sign the agreement before Canada, we will be hit very hard in the cranberry and the maple sectors. On the other slides, I do not want to go too far, because there is a whole lot of data, but another slide shows the growing numbers of taps in the States.
Quebec is still the leader in the system. We work together with the federation. We have a great system. We push on quality; I showed you the exports we already have, but still if the Americans sign an agreement with Europe before we do, they will dig into the volume we already have or the growth we might expect from that kind of agreement. Not that I want to be negative, I just want to give you an example of what happens when we wait until the other country signs onto something.
This shows the level of paperwork we have to fill in if I'm an organic producer-packer: in the States it's about that big, in Canada it's that big, and in Japan it's that big. Unfortunately, a U.S.-Japanese trade agreement on the organic business was signed within the last month—and you all know about that—which means that whatever paperwork we have to fill in, the U.S. and the Japanese organic certifications are becoming the same.
It's very hurtful for Canada because I know we sell maple syrup in Japan. We know that it's very hard and we know that making organic maple syrup in the States is very easy, but now they're equivalent, so that will be pretty challenging for our market. I don't want to say we did not do what we had to do. It's just an example to say we need to move on with this agreement.
I've been talking about this for so many years with our fellows in the federation, why don't we take the chance of having this agreement to protect the name “maple syrup”? If you go to Europe “maple” is written on the shelves, but it doesn't taste like it. A whole bunch of products on the shelves in Europe have been packed with no protection for the name. If they're requesting that we protect some of the names of the products coming from Europe, this agreement is the right time to do it. Maple is the emblematic logo and product of Canada. Are we going to protect it?
Just to let you know, my final word, I am talking as the CEO of Citadelle, but we have an industry association, and I spoke with everyone in the industry to make sure they agree with those statements, so all the Quebec industries are behind this statement and proposal.