Idea 130 of 500. Cluster 6: Food and drink as export, not just hospitality
Spice oils and extracts rather than raw spice
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.
Every idea in cluster 6 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Ask a distiller of essential oils in your area what it would cost to distil a trial batch of one spice oil, clove, pepper or cinnamon leaf. Take the price per litre to a flavouring or cosmetics buyer abroad, found through a trade directory, and ask what they would pay for it. The gap between those two numbers is the business.
- Who pays first
- A flavouring or cosmetics firm abroad that buys spice oils and wants a traceable source with the origin on the documents.
- What leaves today
- Spices leave as whole or dried raw material, and the distilling, which multiplies the value per kilo, is done by the buyer abroad.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. ElevenThe Mechanisms
What a brand and an owned variety are worth, from the kiwifruit growers - Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
The island's spices: pepper, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg
More from cluster 6
Idea 130 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.