Snack seasoning powders made from spice extracts

This unit makes seasoning powders for snacks and bakery items, such as pepper, chilli, masala and ginger-garlic flavours. Instead of grinding whole spice, it mixes small amounts of spice extract (oleoresin, a thick concentrate of a spice's taste and colour) into salt, sugar or starch powder, blends in other dry ingredients, and packs the result in sealed bags.

Spice oleoresins are Ernakulam's One District One Product. Extraction units around Kochi sell much of their output as bulk material, while much of the region's spice still moves raw. A small blender can buy extracts locally in smaller lots and turn them into products a snack maker can use straight away. Kerala has many banana and tapioca chips makers, bakeries and mixture units that want steady taste and colour, and extract-based powders carry fewer germs than ground spice.

You need an FSSAI food licence, a clean and dry room, a ribbon blender, a sifter, weighing scales and a sealing machine, plus regular tests at an outside food lab. The hard part is matching each buyer's taste exactly, batch after batch, while competing with large flavour firms on price. Start with a few flavours done very well.

Sell by visiting chips makers and bakeries with free samples, then offer custom blends packed under their own names.