Starter Kit. Idea 220 of 500. Cluster 10
A tea-quality laboratory certifying estate origin, so that "Ceylon" on a packet in Hamburg can be checked
The mechanism, from the book
The Colombo auction sells tea by the lot to a buyer who blends it under his own name. Every step after the auction is where the money is, and every step can be done here by somebody who is not a plantation company.
The first step
Email 5 tea importers or packers abroad, through their public contact details, with one question: would they pay to have a sample tested and certified as genuine single-origin Ceylon, and how much. Then ask a university food science department whether it could run the test. The proof is a price per sample from a buyer and a laboratory willing to try.
- Who pays first
- A tea packer abroad whose customers are asking whether Ceylon on the packet is true, and who needs a certificate to prove it.
- What leaves today
- Ceylon tea is blended abroad and the name is used with no check, so the premium the name carries can be claimed by anyone.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask whether they test estate origin now, and whether a private laboratory could.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask how a testing laboratory gets accredited for food testing.
Check before you spend
Whether your laboratory can be accredited so a packer abroad accepts its report, and which tests prove estate origin to that standard.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a packer abroad pay per sample tested?
- How many samples a month would your first buyers send?
- What do the first testing instruments cost?
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 Ceylon mark is worth something only when an inspector refuses the bad batch.
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.