Starter Kit. Idea 179 of 500. Cluster 8
Virgin coconut oil, cold-pressed, certified, in consumer packs
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
Cold-press a small batch of virgin coconut oil, or buy from a small press you can visit, and fill 50 glass bottles labelled with the district and pressing date. Sell them to guesthouse guests and a health-food shop. Then find out from a certification body what organic certification would cost. Price, sales and certification cost together tell you whether to scale.
- Who pays first
- A health-food shop or visitor who wants oil they can trace to a district and a pressing date.
- What leaves today
- Coconut oil leaves in bulk, and the consumer bottle, with its certification and brand, is filled and priced abroad.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which standard virgin coconut oil must meet to be sold as virgin.
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask whether producers of virgin coconut oil must register with them.
Check before you spend
Whether your oil meets the virgin standard a buyer will test for, and which organic or quality certificate your target shop actually asks for.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a bottle of virgin coconut oil sell for in a health shop?
- How many nuts go into one bottle of cold-pressed oil?
- What does a laboratory charge to test one batch for quality?
A comparison from the book
Japan. Chapter Eleven
"a Ceylon mark that means something because an inspector will not let a bad batch carry it"
A quality claim on the bottle is worth only what the testing behind it is worth.
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.