Starter Kit. Idea 138 of 500. Cluster 6
Wood-apple, soursop and passion-fruit juices and sorbets 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
Churn wood-apple, soursop and passion-fruit sorbet in small batches and sell them from a freezer at a café in a tourist town for 2 weeks. Note which flavour visitors buy again. Then ask the frozen-dessert buyer at a Sri Lankan supermarket abroad whether they would take frozen pulp or finished sorbet, and at what price. Their answer tells you which to export first.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan supermarket or dessert maker abroad that wants tropical fruit flavours most of its customers have never tasted.
- What leaves today
- Fruits unknown abroad ripen and spoil here in season; frozen pulp and sorbet let the flavour, and its price, travel.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what testing and labelling juices and sorbets for export should meet.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which markets abroad buy tropical juices and sorbets.
Check before you spend
That the fruit is clean and processed safely, that cold storage holds all the way, and what buyer countries require on labels.
Find out these three numbers
- What do supermarkets abroad pay for a sorbet or juice?
- How much fruit can be bought steadily each season?
- What does freezing and shipping cost per case?
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.