Starter Kit. Idea 427 of 500. Cluster 22
Shared depots where twenty producers fill one container
The mechanism, from the book
The village cannot get a box to the container port. The gap is small firms, not big ones.
The first step
List the producers in one district who export, or want to, but cannot fill a container alone: spice growers, coconut processors, craft makers. Ask each how many pallets they could send and when, then take the combined list to a freight forwarder and ask the price of one shared container. The proof is 20 producers committed to one shipment date.
- Who pays first
- A small exporter who has had an order from abroad but could not fill a container, and pays for a share of one instead.
- What leaves today
- Small producers sell to consolidators who export under their own name and margin; a shared depot lets the producer export and keep that margin.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask whether they can introduce small exporters in one district who want to ship together.
- Sri Lanka Customs. Ask how one shared container carrying goods from several exporters is declared and cleared.
Check before you spend
Confirm how a container holding goods from several producers is documented and cleared, who signs as exporter, and what insurance covers each producer's share.
Find out these three numbers
- How many pallets could each producer send in one shipment?
- What does renting a small depot near the main road cost?
- Which buyer abroad would take a mixed container from one district?
A comparison from the book
Denmark. Chapter Eleven
"Members signed binding contracts, usually for about 10 years, and each was answerable for the debts of the whole."
Get each producer to commit their pallets in writing, so the container is full on the day.
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.