Starter Kit. Idea 287 of 500. Cluster 14
Kithul tapping co-operatives with a shared processing plant and a brand
The mechanism, from the book
The smallholder sells raw to a collector at the gate and the collector sells to a packer who puts his own name on it. Denmark's farmers got rich the day they owned the creamery.
The first step
Gather the treacle of five kithul tappers in one village, have it tested for purity, and bottle it under one shared label. Offer the bottles to a delicatessen, a hotel and a Sri Lankan grocery in London with the test result on the label. The price they will pay for tested treacle, compared with what the tappers get at the gate, is the case for a shared plant.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan grocery whose customers want genuine kithul treacle and will pay more for a tested, branded bottle.
- What leaves today
- Tappers sell treacle to traders unbranded, so the premium for genuine kithul goes to whoever can prove it is real.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which laboratory can test kithul treacle to prove it is pure.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask which co-operative form suits tappers sharing a plant and a brand.
Check before you spend
Whether each tapper signs a contract to supply the shared plant, and whether the treacle passes a purity test before it is bottled.
Find out these three numbers
- What does pure kithul treacle sell for in a delicatessen?
- How many tappers would supply the shared plant?
- What does the shared plant cost to equip?
A comparison from the book
New Zealand. Chapter Eleven
"one company owned by the growers, Zespri, has been the only exporter of New Zealand kiwifruit"
One grower-owned seller stops tappers undercutting each other on price.
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.