WHY NOT SRI LANKA? සිංහල

Starter Kit. Idea 257 of 500. Cluster 13

Dried fish and Maldive fish for Sri Lankans abroad, packed to a food-safety standard

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

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

Phone the owner of a Sri Lankan grocery in London and ask which dried fish they stock, where it comes from and what customers complain about. Then send a sample pack sealed and labelled to a food-safety standard, with a trade price, and ask for an opening order. A first carton ordered, or a clear list of what must change on the label, tells you the next step.

Who pays first
A Sri Lankan grocery owner in London who wants dried fish they can shelve without worrying about inspectors, and that customers trust to be clean.
What leaves today
Sri Lankans abroad already buy dried fish abroad, but the packing, labelling and safety standard that command a shelf price are done outside the island.

Ask first

  • Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Ask what approval a dried fish packing room needs for export.
  • Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which food-safety standard dried fish packs must meet.

Check before you spend

Whether your packing room has approval for export, and whether the destination country allows dried fish in by post or only through an importer.

Find out these three numbers

  1. What does a grocery abroad pay per kilo of dried fish?
  2. What do customers complain about in what they buy now?
  3. What does sealing and labelling one pack cost?

A comparison from the book

Sri Lankans abroad. Appendix

"The single most valuable thing a Sri Lankan in Melbourne or Zurich can do"

Sri Lankans abroad are the first order and the honest review a new pack needs.

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.