Starter Kit. Idea 176 of 500. Cluster 8
Coconut water, bottled and branded rather than sold as bulk concentrate
The mechanism, from the book
The whole-nut principle. Sri Lanka's coconut exports are growing, which makes this the one chain already moving. Almost every part of the nut has a market and most of them leave the island unprocessed.
The first step
Find out from a coconut collector near you what they get per nut now, then get a written quote from a small bottler for 500 bottles of pasteurised coconut water with your label. Send photos and a price list to three Sri Lankan supermarkets abroad and one café in Colombo and ask for a trial order. The gap between the nut price and the bottle price is the business.
- Who pays first
- A café or supermarket that wants a bottled coconut water with the island named on the label.
- What leaves today
- Bulk concentrate is bottled and branded abroad, where the label earns the margin and the island is not named.
Ask first
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask whether a bottler of coconut water needs to register with them before selling.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what a small bottling room must show before it can sell drinks to the public.
Check before you spend
Whether your bottling room needs food-premises approval, and what shelf-life testing a supermarket buyer will ask to see before stocking it.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a bottle of imported coconut water sell for in a Colombo supermarket?
- How many bottles a week would one café or shop reorder?
- What does a small bottler charge per bottle for pasteurising and labelling?
A comparison from the book
Switzerland. Chapter Sixteen
"leaves the country as a branded product with a Swiss name on it."
A coconut product already leaves the island branded; the question is whose name is on the label.
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.