Starter Kit. Idea 235 of 500. Cluster 11
Cinnamon by-products, the chips and the featherings, into oil and powder instead of waste
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
Find out from 3 cinnamon processors what they do with chips and featherings now and what they would sell them for. Buy a few sacks, have a distiller make a trial batch of oil and a mill grind the rest to powder, and offer both to 3 oil and spice buyers. The proof is a price for each and a processor willing to supply.
- Who pays first
- An essential oil or spice powder buyer who wants cinnamon at a lower cost than quills and does not need the shape.
- What leaves today
- The offcuts of the peeling are sold cheaply or thrown away, so value the island has already paid to produce leaves as waste.
Ask first
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask whether cinnamon chips and featherings can be sold as oil or powder for export.
- Central Environmental Authority. Ask whether a small distilling unit needs environmental approval.
Check before you spend
Whether distilling or milling the by-products needs food or environmental approval, and what the buyer's purity test requires.
Find out these three numbers
- What do processors get for chips and featherings now?
- How much oil does a sack of featherings give?
- What does cinnamon powder from featherings fetch per kilo?
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.