You can read my latest maple history contribution to the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association June 2024 newsletter at this link, or by clicking on the image below.
This article looks at the role Minnesota played as the place where the commercial manufacture of reverse osmosis technology for the maple syrup industry got its start. In 1969, Dean Spatz created a Minnesota-based company called Osmonics, Inc. for the manfacture of reverse osmosis machines and membranes. Maple producers in the 1970s and 1980s gradually began to adopt the technology for concentrating maple sap in making maple syrup. As the only manufacturer at the time, syrup producers relied on Osmonics to help get reverse osmosis off the ground for the maple industry.