Starter Kit. Idea 180 of 500. Cluster 8
Coconut milk and cream in retail formats rather than industrial drums
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
Ask a coconut milk processor who sells in industrial drums whether they would fill a trial run of small cartons or tins with your label. While you wait, show a mock-up and a price to the buyer at a Sri Lankan supermarket abroad and one supermarket at home, and ask what they would order. Two orders justify the first run.
- Who pays first
- A supermarket abroad whose shoppers cook with coconut milk every week and would buy one from its origin.
- What leaves today
- Coconut milk leaves in industrial drums and is packed abroad, so the retail price and the brand are captured by somebody else.
Ask first
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask which processors already fill retail packs and might take a small trial order.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which standard applies to coconut milk sold in cartons or tins.
Check before you spend
Whether the processor's premises and your label meet the food rules of the country you sell to, and who carries the cost of spoiled packs.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a retail carton of coconut milk sell for abroad?
- What is the smallest run a processor will fill with your label?
- What do cartons or tins cost per thousand?
A comparison from the book
Kurunegala. Chapter Sixteen
"Nestlé Lanka makes, at Kurunegala, the entire global supply of Maggi coconut milk powder."
Retail coconut milk is already made on the island; a Sri Lankan brand is what is still missing.
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.