Why Nootz Was Chosen for Sri Lanka’s First CIRCULAR Cohort & What This Means for the Future of Food
There’s a question that our founder, Dulara de Alwis, has been asking since long before it was fashionable to ask it.
“Can a smoothie change the way we farm, export, and nourish?”
For most people, that sounds like the kind of ambitious, impractical idealism that gets politely applauded and quietly shelved. But Dulara believed the answer was yes, and he built NOOTZ to prove it.
Today, that belief has received meaningful external validation. In 2025, we were selected as part of the first-ever cohort of the CIRCULAR Programme—a flagship European Union-funded initiative implemented by Expertise France, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and partly co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
This programme is one year in duration and was designed to assist innovative companies like Nootz in reducing food loss, food waste, and single-use plastic while embedding circular economy practices into Sri Lanka’s policy and business landscapes. As a growth-stage startup, we were selected for the Investment Readiness Programme (IRP). This partnership provided us with a year of high-level support, which included expert mentorship to refine our expansion strategy, capital access for scaling our shelf-stable coconut smoothies and strategic networking to bring Sri Lankan innovation to the global stage.
Being chosen for this cohort was more than just a growth opportunity. It was an endorsement of our circular model. It was also a signal that our international partners see what we see: Nootz’s potential to transform Sri Lanka’s food economy, one smoothie at a time.
The Problem That Started It All: Sri Lanka’s Silent Agricultural Crisis
Nootz was chosen because of its work in addressing the post-harvest losses in the coconut and fruit value chain in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka loses an estimated 30–40% of its fruit harvest between the farm and the consumer as per the UN FAO estimates. The reasons include improper handling, a fragmented cold chain, poor storage infrastructure, and volatile market dynamics. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Agriculture has acknowledged that the country loses around 40% of its produce to post-harvest losses.
More than a third of what a Sri Lankan farmer grows never reaches a plate. It rots in the field. It collapses in transit. It piles up at the market during seasonal gluts when supply floods in and prices crater.
The consequences are reduced farmer incomes, increased methane emissions resulting from decomposing food, and less robust food security in a country that has faced significant economic pressure in recent years.
This is a key problem that NOOTZ — the world’s first shelf-stable coconut smoothie — was built to solve.
“At Nootz, we turn post-harvest losses into nourishing smoothies. That’s circularity in action!” — Dulara De Alwis, CEO, Ceylon Exports & Trading
What Is the CIRCULAR Programme?
The CIRCULAR Programme (full name: Circular Economy in the Food Sector) is a 2024–2027 European Union-funded initiative operating under the EU’s landmark €300 billion Global Gateway strategy (Europe’s vision for sustainable, equitable connectivity with the world). In Sri Lanka, the programme is implemented as a three-partner consortium:
Expertise France focuses on access to finance for growth and expansion-stage companies seeking Series A funding (typically USD 500K–USD 5M) and on reducing single-use plastics in the food sector.
GIZ (German development agency) focuses on early-stage companies seeking seed funding (USD 10K–USD 500K) and on building investment readiness.
FAO works to reduce food loss and waste in key supply chains — including vegetables and fisheries — and to promote alternatives to single-use plastics in agriculture.
Together, the programme has two defining objectives: to increase the recovery and processing of food surplus and waste to support vulnerable consumers and producers, and to enhance sustainable production, distribution, and consumption models related to food waste, loss, and single-use plastics.
Critically, unlike many incubator or accelerator programmes, CIRCULAR does not acquire equity in the companies it supports. The goal isn’t financial extraction — it’s systemic transformation.
The programme’s selection process was competitive and rigorous, targeting businesses that go beyond the language of sustainability into the logic of genuine circularity: closed-loop systems that design out waste, keep materials in use, and regenerate natural systems.
Why Nootz? The Three-Part Case
When the selection committees reviewed applications, they were looking for businesses that didn’t just minimise harm… they were looking for enterprises that created value from systemic failures. We made the shortlist for three interconnected reasons.
1. A Direct, Scalable Answer to the Post-Harvest Crisis
Nootz doesn’t just talk about post-harvest loss reduction. Our entire business model is the solution.
By sourcing surplus coconuts, mangoes, pineapples, papayas and passion fruits at peak harvest — precisely the moment when seasonal gluts drive market prices down and losses spike — we transform what would become waste into high-value, shelf-stable products. Rather than allowing fruit to rot or farmers to accept collapse-level prices, Nootz creates a guaranteed offtake channel.
The mechanism is cold chain storage combined with advanced thermal processing technology the same fruit that would perish within days under conventional conditions is “locked in” at peak nutritional and flavour quality, achieving a longer shelf life without chemical preservatives, added sugars, or artificial additives. This isn’t a product built on compromise but a premium offering by design and by necessity.
For farmers, this guarantee from Nootz creates a genuine safety net. For Sri Lanka’s food system, it turns a chronic vulnerability into a strategic strength.
2. High-Value Innovation Over Raw Commodity Export
Sri Lanka has long exported raw agricultural commodities — desiccated coconut, bulk fruit pulp, unprocessed spices. The economic value in those supply chains largely accrues downstream, in importing, branding, distribution and retail, in Europe, North America, and Asia.
We represent a deliberate departure from that model.
As the creator of the world’s first shelf-stable coconut smoothie, Nootz is a sophisticated, branded consumer product that was developed, manufactured, and exported from Sri Lanka. The intellectual property, the proprietary processing technology, and the brand equity — these remain in Sri Lanka. This model preserves the economic value for future generations, vis-a-vis the traditional commodity model
This aligns directly with the CIRCULAR Programme’s mandate to foster “Investment Readiness” in Sri Lankan SMEs and to transition the agri-food sector away from dependence on raw commodity exports toward high-value, knowledge-intensive manufacturing. The EU and its implementing partners are explicit: they want to support models that retain more economic benefit within the country and build sustainable local livelihoods.
Nootz had also already demonstrated market traction before entering the cohort, having successfully entered international markets, including Germany, proving that this wasn’t a concept pitch but that we were a validated business with genuine global potential.
3. Alignment with the EU Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy
The European Union isn’t simply funding this programme as an act of charity. It is making an investment with a strategic purpose: advancing the EU Green Deal and its Farm to Fork strategy, which sets binding targets for sustainable food systems across Europe and its trading partners.
The Farm to Fork strategy demands healthier food systems, reduced environmental footprints, and greater transparency from farm to shelf. European consumers and retailers are increasingly demanding clean-label products — no preservatives, no artificial additives, non-GMO, traceable to source.
NOOTZ checks every box. Our zero-preservative, no-added-sugar formulation is not just a product differentiator — it is a direct answer to some of the most demanding consumer standards in the world. For EU market actors and investors evaluating Sri Lankan suppliers, we represent the kind of supply chain partner they are increasingly looking for.
In fact, Nootz has already earned quality certifications across the board- ISO 22000, Organic – JAS, EU, USDA NOP, Halal, Kosher, V-label, SMETA- we don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk.
What Being in the First Cohort Actually Means
Nootz is part of the founding cohort under the CIRCULARITY program, which means, as a company we gain:
Pioneer status and institutional recognition. Being among the first businesses officially recognised by the EU, GIZ, Expertise France, and FAO as leaders in the circular economy in Sri Lanka is a form of credibility that cannot be purchased. When we walk into a meeting with a European retailer, an impact investor, or a potential distribution partner, we carry the endorsement of some of the world’s most credible development institutions.
Shaping the playbook. First cohort companies don’t just benefit from the programme — they help shape it. The challenges, solutions, and breakthroughs that we’ve navigated over the past year, will inform how the CIRCULAR Programme supports future cohorts and may feed into how circular economy approaches are discussed at a national policy level in Sri Lanka.
Intensive support and attention. Founding cohorts typically receive a higher degree of direct engagement from international experts, consultants, and programme staff as the initiative works to establish its initial success stories. That means more tailored mentoring, more targeted technical assistance, and more direct access to the programme’s networks.
Access to a global financing ecosystem. The CIRCULAR Programme’s Access to Finance Strategy — launched at an event in Colombo in October 2025 — specifically supports businesses requiring USD 500,000 to USD 5 million for circular transitions through mentoring, circular clinics, and investor matchmaking. We entered this ecosystem with institutional backing and a proven business case, making us a compelling proposition for the impact investors and financial institutions the programme is actively convening.
The Deeper Impact: Beyond the Bottle
Participating in the CIRCULAR cohort hasn’t simply been about Nootz’s business growth. It has been an opportunity to deepen and document a broader impact story — one that speaks to three interconnected dimensions of sustainability.
Economic resilience for farming communities. By creating a consistent, volume-driven demand for surplus tropical fruit, we stabilise farmer income during the seasonal gluts that normally devastate rural livelihoods. This is circularity that reaches into the roots of the supply chain — not just processing efficiency at the factory level.
Decarbonising the food system. Coconut water, for example, is frequently treated as a waste byproduct in large-scale coconut processing facilities — discharged into waterways and contributing to elevated biological oxygen demand (BOD). By making coconut water a primary ingredient, we simultaneously eliminate a waste stream and reduce the carbon footprint associated with waste disposal. What was once an environmental liability becomes a nutritional asset.
Contributing to a wider conversation on food innovation. The CIRCULAR Programme’s work in Sri Lanka is being followed with interest across the region. Sri Lanka’s experience — and the businesses it produces — could help demonstrate how circular economy models can work in practice for South Asian agri-food SMEs. Our participation adds to a growing body of evidence that this approach is commercially viable, not just aspirational.
Looking Forward: Graduation and What Comes Next
The first cohort just graduated last week, on the 30th and 31st of March 2026 (more on this special day in an upcoming blog!)
Nootz does not treat this as an exit. It is the beginning of an expansion.
Graduation means entering the world with a supply chain verified against rigorous international sustainability standards, with institutional backing from the EU and its partners, with a network of investors and market actors actively looking for exactly what we offer, and with a brand story that is authentic, data-backed, and genuinely differentiated.
The EU Global Gateway’s vision for Sri Lanka is not to remain a supplier of raw materials to wealthier economies. It is to become a global leader in sustainable, high-value production — a country that exports intelligence and innovation alongside its extraordinary natural abundance.
Nootz is that vision, made drinkable.
A New Economic Logic
There is a certain kind of business founder who sees a problem and asks, “How do I avoid it?” And there is a rarer kind who sees the same problem and asks, “How do I build something that makes this problem impossible to ignore?”
Our CEO, Dulara de Alwis, is the second kind.
The world’s first shelf-stable coconut smoothie was never just a product. It was a demonstration that the conventional assumptions about what Sri Lanka can export and how farmers can be supported and how a brand can do well by doing good aren’t fixed. They are choices. And they can be changed.
The European Union, GIZ, Expertise France, and FAO didn’t select us for the first CIRCULAR cohort because we fit neatly into a category. They selected us because we represent a genuinely new approach, born from a genuine understanding of a genuine problem.
