Starter Kit. Idea 131 of 500. Cluster 6
Value-added cinnamon: ground, capsuled, oil, branded consumer packs
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
Buy 1 kg of good quills from a peeler you trust, grind some, fill some into capsules at a shared kitchen, and pack both in retail packs with the grade and the district on the label. Send sample packs to two health-food shops and one Sri Lankan grocer abroad and ask for a trial order at a stated price. Their order tells you which format to make first.
- Who pays first
- A health-food shop or grocer abroad that wants true cinnamon with a named district on the pack, not an anonymous bulk grade.
- What leaves today
- The island holds the world's true cinnamon and much of it leaves as bulk quills; the grinding, packing and brand add the value elsewhere.
Ask first
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask what support exists for grinding and packing cinnamon for retail.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what testing and labelling ground cinnamon should meet.
Check before you spend
Whether ground or capsuled cinnamon needs registration, that it is tested for purity, and what labels each market needs.
Find out these three numbers
- What do supermarkets abroad pay for a branded pack?
- What does grinding and packing cost per pack?
- Which buyers want true cinnamon rather than cassia?
A comparison from the book
Cinnamon. Chapter Four
"Sri Lanka holds a near-monopoly on true cinnamon and still earns less from it than Vietnam earns from cassia."
The monopoly earns little until the cinnamon leaves branded instead of in bales.
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.