Starter Kit. Idea 181 of 500. Cluster 8
Coconut flour and desiccated coconut for the gluten-free and baking markets
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
Dry and mill a small batch of coconut flour from the pulp left after pressing milk, and bake the same cake with it three times to test the result. Pack it in 500 g bags with a recipe card. Send samples to two gluten-free bakers abroad, found through their shop pages, and ask what they would pay per kilo. Their price shows whether the pulp is worth drying.
- Who pays first
- A gluten-free baker abroad who needs a steady supply of coconut flour with a clear origin and grade.
- What leaves today
- Pulp left after pressing is a by-product here, while dried and milled it becomes a retail flour for the baking market abroad.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which standard covers coconut flour and desiccated coconut sold in retail bags.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which buyers abroad have asked for gluten-free coconut flour recently.
Check before you spend
Whether a gluten-free claim on your bag needs testing, and which food-safety certificate a baking supplier abroad asks for before a first order.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a bag of coconut flour sell for in a shop abroad?
- How much pulp left after pressing turns into one bag of flour?
- Which baking suppliers abroad would take a trial order?
A comparison from the book
Britain. Chapter Sixteen
"add the value in Sri Lanka and sell it in Britain with no tax at the border"
Britain's scheme already favours value added on the island; ask whether your flour qualifies before pricing it.
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.