Starter Kit. Idea 255 of 500. Cluster 13
Tuna graded, loined and vacuum-packed at the harbour for the sashimi market, not sold whole
The mechanism, from the book
An ocean eight times the size of the land, and a fishing fleet that sells its catch on the beach. The Maldives built a tourism industry on water Sri Lanka has more of.
The first step
Stand at the harbour when the long-line boats unload and record what a whole tuna fetches that morning, by weight and by boat. Then ask a hotel's head chef or a sushi kitchen in the city what they pay per kilo for sashimi-grade loin, and whether they would take a trial order cut and vacuum-packed at the harbour. The difference between those two numbers, and one trial order, is the business case.
- Who pays first
- A sushi kitchen or hotel chef who pays by the kilo for graded, loined tuna and cannot trust whole fish that sat on a hot quay.
- What leaves today
- Whole tuna leaves the harbour at a bulk price, and the grading, cutting and cold packing that make it sashimi are paid for somewhere else.
Ask first
- Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Ask what a harbour processing room needs to export tuna for sashimi.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which buyers abroad want graded tuna loins from here.
Check before you spend
Whether your processing room meets the food-safety approval the importing country demands, and how cold the fish must stay at every step.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a whole tuna fetch at the harbour on a good morning?
- What does a sashimi buyer pay per kilo of graded loin?
- How many fish a week meet sashimi grade?
A comparison from the book
Denmark. Chapter Eleven
"Denmark went on to build branded, graded butter and bacon, and got rich doing it."
Grading the catch and branding it is how a raw product earns more.
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.