Idea 189 of 500. Cluster 8: The coconut, which deserves its own list
Coir pots and seedling trays for the European garden-centre trade, replacing plastic
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.
Every idea in cluster 8 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Ask a coir mill whether they would press a trial run of 500 pots and seedling trays for you. Photograph them planted and send the pictures, a price per thousand and a note on how they break down, to five garden-centre buyers and one plant nursery in Europe. Ask each what quantity they would order for spring. A single order proves the market.
- Who pays first
- A European garden centre replacing plastic pots and trays, whose customers want something they can plant straight into the soil.
- What leaves today
- Coir leaves as raw fibre to be pressed into pots elsewhere, so the plastic-free product and its price never carry the island's name.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
What the book adds
One nut, 15 businesses, and the only reason the island exports most of it raw is that nobody built the processing, the packaging or the brand.
In the book
- Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
Rubber and coconut on the island's lower slopes and coast - Ch. SixteenThe Bridge
Nestlé Lanka's coconut milk powder, made at Kurunegala for the world
More from cluster 8
- 176Coconut water, bottled and branded rather than sold as bulk concentrate
- 177Coconut water jelly and other set desserts, a product nobody yet associates with Sri Lanka
- 178King coconut as a named origin product, the way Alphonso is a named mango
- 179Virgin coconut oil, cold-pressed, certified, in consumer packs
- 180Coconut milk and cream in retail formats rather than industrial drums
- 181Coconut flour and desiccated coconut for the gluten-free and baking markets
Idea 189 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.