Starter Kit. Idea 126 of 500. Cluster 6
King coconut water, bottled and branded for export
The mechanism, from the book
Dilmah says it earns over 3 times the national average price for tea, because it does its own blending, branding and packing. The proof has been sitting inside the industry all along.
The first step
Ask a nearby bottler or a food technology lab what it would take to give king coconut water a shelf life of several months, and get the method and cost in writing. Then contact two Sri Lankan supermarkets abroad, send a photo of a mock label and ask what they would pay per bottle and how many they would order. A price and a quantity make the case.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan supermarket abroad whose customers know king coconut from home and cannot buy it where they live.
- What leaves today
- King coconut is sold fresh at the roadside, so the island's most recognisable drink earns nothing once a visitor has flown home.
Ask first
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask what rules apply to processing and exporting king coconut water.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what testing bottled drinks for export should go through.
Check before you spend
How long the water keeps safely, what processing the buyer country requires, and whether the supply of nuts is steady through the year.
Find out these three numbers
- What do supermarkets abroad pay per bottle?
- How many nuts can be bought each week?
- What does bottling cost per unit?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka. Chapter Fourteen
"Turn the raw things into finished ones: cinnamon into a branded product"
Turn the raw thing into a finished one, and keep the brand at home.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.