Starter Kit. Idea 189 of 500. Cluster 8
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which garden-centre buyers in Europe have asked for coir pots and trays.
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask which coir mills can press pots and trays in volume.
Check before you spend
Whether the importing country needs a plant-health certificate for coir pots, and what a garden-centre buyer requires for strength and lifespan.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a garden centre in Europe pay per thousand plastic pots now?
- What does a mill charge to press a trial run of pots?
- How long does a coir pot hold together when kept wet?
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"
Ask whether your pots qualify under Britain's scheme, which already favours value added on the island.
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.