WHY NOT SRI LANKA? සිංහල

Starter Kit. Idea 232 of 500. Cluster 11

Turmeric from Sri Lanka tested and labelled for curcumin content, which is what the health market pays for

Back to the idea

Written for this site as a starting point, not from the book. Rules and fees change: ask the bodies named below before you spend money.

The mechanism, from the book

The imitation out-earns the original. Vietnam earns more from cassia than Sri Lanka does from true cinnamon, because the cassia arrives on the shelf as a product and the cinnamon arrives at the port as a bale.

The first step

Collect turmeric from 5 growers, have each sample tested for curcumin at a food-testing laboratory, and print the result on the pack. Show the tested packs to 5 health food shops or supplement makers at home and abroad and ask what premium the tested figure earns. The proof is a price difference and one buyer.

Who pays first
A supplement maker or health food shop abroad whose customers buy turmeric for curcumin and who wants a tested figure on a traceable source.
What leaves today
Sri Lankan turmeric is sold untested and unnamed, so it competes on price with every other origin instead of on the one number the market pays for.

Ask first

  • Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which laboratories can test turmeric for curcumin to a recognised method.
  • Department of Export Agriculture. Ask whether turmeric exporters must register, and what tests they expect.

Check before you spend

Whether the laboratory's curcumin test is accepted in the health shop's country, and what the label may and may not claim.

Find out these three numbers

  1. What does a health shop pay for turmeric with tested curcumin?
  2. What does one curcumin test cost per sample?
  3. How much does curcumin vary between your growers?

A comparison from the book

Costa Rica. Chapter Eleven

"The money was never in the samples. It was in the testing, the trials and the patents."

The tested number is what the health buyer pays for, not the raw root.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

WITH500BUSINESS IDEASTO STARTTOMORROW

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.