What makes our business model so special and different from other spice traders is that we know exactly where our spices come from. We call that Single Origin. We are also in contact with our farmers and try to visit them regularly to maintain ties, but also to see how they work, what challenges they might face, how we can help each other and improve cooperation.

And that's why I (Charis) visited our partners at Eko Land in Sri Lanka in March.

Nihal and his son Remon run Eko Land. They started this in 2020, when tourists stopped coming to their eco-lodges due to corona. They still wanted to continue paying their staff. Many poor people live in this area who desperately need work, so they came up with the idea of selling spices, as these already grow on the land where their eco-lodges are located.

Charis, Nihal & Remon

Moreover, many people living there simply have spices in their gardens. These are usually picked and dried and taken to the local market, hoping to make a little profit. But by buying freshly picked spices at a fair price and drying them in a communal facility, they can guarantee better quality, save the farmers work (they no longer have to dry them themselves or take them to market), and also get a better price.

Fresh peppercorns

Especially black pepper grows everywhere there. It's a climbing plant that grows well in combination with other trees and crops. We also visited the farmers who grow our nutmeg. It took some searching for a ripe nutmeg, because then you can see so beautifully how the mace grows around the nutmeg. It will still be some time before the nutmeg can be harvested, so it was a bit of a search, but we succeeded. What a beautiful spice it is!

Ripe nutmeg with mace and nutmeg on the tree

I also visited the factory where the spices are dried, sorted and packaged. They were just sorting pepper, among other things, and the nice thing was that this pepper is for an order we placed! So that will be coming to us soon, which was really cool to see. They were also sorting cardamom seeds. Phew, what a lot of work that is! We choose to import only cardamom pods and not seeds or powder. I took some ground cardamom home and indeed: cardamom powder really doesn't have much flavor anymore. If you take the seeds out of the pods yourself and grind them, you get a much more intense taste experience. Maybe a bit more work, but it's totally worth it.

The mood in Sri Lanka was somewhat subdued due to the whole situation with Iran. Many flights were cancelled because most flights went via the Middle East, which immediately led to fewer tourists. Fuel prices had also risen sharply, which is very difficult for locals, as many people travel by tuk-tuk. These fuel price increases immediately brought back associations with the severe economic crisis they had there in 2020.

And that while they are still recovering from the impact of Cyclone Ditwah, which caused enormous damage in November 2025. We then set up a donation campaign for this, to which many of our customers generously contributed. I also went to see the projects where the raised money is being used. That was very impressive to see. I wrote a separate blog about it. If you're curious about what they did with the donation money, you can read about it here.

All in all, during my visit, I was very impressed by the resilience of the people in Sri Lanka. Many people don't have much, but they are friendly and happy with what they do have. It's nice to see how much pleasure they take in working with the spices we buy from them. And the best way to help them, especially now that things are a bit more difficult again, is to keep buying a lot of spices from them.

So, do you need new black pepper, Ceylon cinnamon, or nutmeg again?
Throw them in your shopping cart! ;-)

The Eko Land spice factory team