Starter Kit. Idea 148 of 500. Cluster 6
Sea salt from the Puttalam and Hambantota pans, flaked and branded
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
Approach a salt-pan owner in Puttalam or Hambantota about buying crystals from the top of the pan at harvest, then flake, dry and pack 50 small jars with the pan's name on the label. Put them in a guesthouse shop and on a hotel restaurant's tables. Then send two jars to a fine-food shop abroad and ask for a trial order at a named price.
- Who pays first
- A fine-food shop or restaurant that already sells named sea salts and would stock one from a tropical pan with a story.
- What leaves today
- Salt from the pans is sold as a cheap bulk commodity, while flaked, named sea salt sells by the jar at a far higher price.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what standard salt sold as food must meet.
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask who controls the salt pans and whether you can buy from them.
Check before you spend
That the salt is tested clean, that the pans' owners agree to supply you, and that labels are honest about where it comes from.
Find out these three numbers
- What do shops abroad pay for a box of flaked salt?
- What do the pans charge for raw salt?
- What does flaking and packing cost per box?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka. Chapter Fourteen
"Turn the raw things into finished ones: cinnamon into a branded product"
Raw salt becomes a finished product once it carries its place and its name.
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.