Date and sugarcane molasses (gur)

About the business

Tapping date palms in winter, boiling the sap down in a wide pan into liquid gur or patali cakes, and selling it at the haat or to a wholesaler - three months of work that carries part of a year's income. Sugarcane gur is the same job with sap from a cane crusher instead. Trees are prepared from the month of Kartik, sap starts running from mid-Agrahayan, and selling runs to the end of Chaitra. Jashore date gur received Geographical Indication status on 15 February 2024 and Manikganj's Hazari gur was certified on 15 June 2026. On 2 November 2025, at the opening of the Jashore season, the agriculture department counted 3,07,130 tappable trees and at least 6,000 gachhis, with sap at Tk 35 a litre and gur at Tk 340 a kg; the previous season liquid gur sold at Tk 400 a kg and patali averaged Tk 500. That gap is the problem. Sugar was Tk 110-115 a kg on 15 September 2026, three to four times cheaper than gur, so faking gur with sugar, molasses, flour, soda, hydros and colour pays well. On 3 December 2025 a mobile court in Faridpur Sadar destroyed 6,500 kg of adulterated gur bound for the Dhaka and Rajshahi markets, and on 6 January 2026 a Manikganj unit was caught making date gur with no sap in it at all. The gachhi who makes the real thing has to compete on price with that.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• A shaving blade and rope, spouts, clay pots, a strainer, a large boiling pan, a stirring ladle, patali moulds and scales - plus netting for the pot mouths.Equipment
• A season's fuel - palm fronds, trimmings and straw. Each batch needs two to three hours of fire, so fuel is the largest running cost.Starting stock
• Compliance with the Safe Food Act 2013. Mobile courts seize and destroy adulterated gur and file cases in the pure food court - on 3 December 2025 in Faridpur Sadar 6,500 kg was destroyed this way.Licence
• Trade licence from the union parishad, municipality or city corporation: form Tk 10, licence book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, non-judicial stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee Tk 100-60,000 by trade type. Issued in 3-5 working days, renewed yearly.Licence
• Registration with the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority under the Food Safety (Registration and Licensing) Regulations 2026, gazetted 16 July 2026. Registration is compulsory for packaged food producers: Tk 1,000 new, Tk 500 renewal, valid three years; licensing for establishments runs Tk 1,000-5,000.Licence
• Tree shaving. How deep to cut which tree, how often, and when to rest it cannot be taught from a book - it is learned by watching. At least 6,000 people do this work in Jashore alone.Skill
• Tree owners for the season's lease, a potter for the clay pots, and a gur wholesaler or arotdar. The haats around Khajura and Chaugachha in Jashore are the centre of this trade.Supplier
• A boiling shed: furnace, wide pan, smoke outlet, water, and space for pots and fuel. It should sit close to the trees, because dawn sap sours if it has to travel.Workspace

How the work is done

1. 1Fix your trees in Kartik. If the trees are not yours, settle the season's arrangement with the owner - how many trees, what share or rent - and write it down.
2. 2Shave the trunk and set the spout. This is the real skill: shave too deep and the tree dies, too little and the sap is thin. A good gachhi takes three or four seasons to make.
3. 3Scald the clay pots clean, tie them up in the afternoon and bring them down at dawn. Sap that turns sour will not set into gur, so there is no room for delay.
4. 4Tie a net over the pot mouth so bats cannot reach the sap at night. Nipah spreads through bat saliva in raw sap, and one such report stops raw juice sales across a whole area.
5. 5Set up the boiling shed with a furnace and a wide pan, and stock the season's fuel - palm fronds, trimmings, straw - in advance. Buying it daily costs more.
6. 6Strain the sap and boil it for two to three hours. Take it off as liquid gur when it thickens, or keep stirring and pour into moulds for patali.
7. 7Decide whether to sell raw sap at all. Sap at Tk 35 a litre pays at once, but boiled into gur it fetches Tk 340-500 a kg, and boiling also removes the Nipah risk.
8. 8Do not mix in sugar, molasses, flour, soda, alum, hydros or colour. Cases are filed under the Safe Food Act 2013, mobile courts destroy the stock, and once an area's gur gets a bad name the honest maker's price falls too.
9. 9Pack the gur with your name, address, date of making and weight on the label, and register with the Food Safety Authority as a packaged food producer - registration is Tk 1,000 and lasts three years.
10. 10Fix your haat days and bargain with the wholesaler, and if you have taken an advance, agree beforehand how many kilos it will be adjusted against.
11. 11After Chaitra gur melts and moulds. Keep what is unsold cool and dry, and divide the season's earnings across the whole year.

Sources

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

• All food businesses now need safety registration

  Collected: 22 Jul 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

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