Gouthama Coconut Products

We are located right on the Kollam Road in Manakala. It’s a pretty easy place to find if you’re driving through. We spend most of our time dealing with coconuts, as you can probably tell from the name. There are piles of them everywhere in the yard. We spend the mornings de-husking and sorting them out. It’s physical work and your hands get pretty rough after a few weeks of doing it. The sun is usually out and it gets bright on the road, so we stay under the shade of the trees when we can. We have a couple of machines for the processing part, but a lot of it is still done by hand. We get loads of coconuts arriving on tractors from the nearby farms. The smell of coconut is on everything we wear. Sometimes the rain slows us down because we can't keep the stuff out in the open if it gets too wet. We’ve been at 3-56/232 for a while now, and the neighbors are used to the noise of the trucks. It’s a simple operation. We don’t have a fancy lobby or anything, just the work area and a small space to keep the books. We just try to get through the daily stock and make sure the quality is okay before it goes out. It's a living, and it keeps the local guys busy. We mostly just talk about the weather and the crop prices during our afternoon break.