Starter Kit. Idea 133 of 500. Cluster 6
Freeze-dried tropical fruit, mangosteen, rambutan, mango and pineapple, as snacks for European and Gulf supermarkets
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 a small quantity of ripe mangosteen, rambutan, mango and pineapple in season and have it freeze-dried by a food technology unit that offers the service, then pack it in plain pouches. Take the samples to 3 importers of dried fruit in Europe or the Gulf and ask what they would pay, in what volume and to what standard. Their answer tells you whether to buy a machine.
- Who pays first
- An importer supplying health-food shops and supermarkets in Europe or the Gulf who wants a tropical fruit snack with a clear origin.
- What leaves today
- Fruit that is not eaten in season rots or sells cheaply at the roadside, while the snack made from the same fruit is sold abroad under other countries' names.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which supermarket buyers abroad they know for dried fruit.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what testing and labelling dried fruit for export should meet.
Check before you spend
That the fruit is clean and safe, that packs meet labelling rules abroad, and what testing supermarket buyers require.
Find out these three numbers
- What do supermarkets pay per pack of freeze-dried fruit?
- What does a freeze dryer cost to buy and run?
- How much fresh fruit makes one pack?
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.