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KASGODA (Sri Lanka), Mar 12 (AFP): Sri Lanka, the world's leading cinnamon supplier, is facing a threat from a cheaper product that is hurting export sales.
The rival is cassia, otherwise known as "Chinese cinnamon" or "Bastard cinnamon."
It is a lookalike grown in China, India and Indonesia, and costs less than a fifth of the price of natural cinnamon, which is cultivated in Sri Lanka in abundance.
But connoisseurs say the taste of the two differ vastly.
"Most people don't taste the real cinnamon-they experience a diluted form ... usually cassia," says Sarada de Silva, president of the Sri Lanka Spice Council.
Cinnamon, which is native to Sri Lanka and whose Latin botanical name cinnamomum zeylanicum is derived from the island's former name, Ceylon, has a lighter colour and sweeter, more delicate flavour than cassia.
"The flavours are poles apart," de Silva says. "Cassia has a thick dark flavour with an unrefined taste."
Sri Lankan cinnamon, which generates at least 80 per cent of the world's output, retails on the world market for 6.00 dollars a kilo of quills. Quills look like Havana cigars with several layers of thin cinnamon rolled inside.
Cassia quills sells for 1.80 dollars on the world market, de Silva says.
Sri Lankan producers are clamouring for the government to take up their case with the World Intellectual Property Organisation to protect natural cinnamon.
"The main problem we have today is that China, India and Indonesia sell cassia as cinnamon," says Wijith Jayatilake, a fourth generation planter who runs the Dassanayake Walauwa Cinnamon Plantation here.
"The problem has to be addressed," agrees DM Karunaratne,director-general of the Sri Lankan Intellectual Property Rights office, the government ministry which protect brand names. But the issue is complicated by the fact that various countries treat cinnamon and cassia differently.
The United States, for instance, allows the term cinnamon to be applied to cassia while in Britain cinnamon has to be the product of cinnamomum zeylanicum.
Jayatilake says some of the cassia producers mix real cinnamon to add flavour.
Sri Lanka exported 12,000 tonnes of cinnamon last year and earned 14.3 million dollars, but the industry says prices would be even better if not for competition from cassia.
Most of the cinnamon is shipped in raw form as quills to key South American markets like Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and Chile where consumers dip a cinnamon stick into their tea to add flavour.
For centuries, cinnamon has shaped the Indian Ocean Island's history. As oil in cinnamon has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties, the spice was valued as a preservative and over the centuries, European demand grew exponentially.
Dutch invaders started commercial crops in the 17th-century. Before that, Sri Lanka's Sinhalese kings used cinnamon to pay mercenaries for protection.
About 30,000 hectares of land in Sri Lanka is under cinnamon cultivation. Some 30,000 people are employed in chopping off cinnamon branches and turning out quills. The plant can be used for about 50 to 60 years.
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